3?4 



part, ov of undue bias towards my friend, when I say that I antici- 

 pated no less than this productive harvest from his projected labour 

 in hitherto uncultivated ground ; because I had seen in him the most 

 scrupulous and minute fidelity of observation, combined with close 

 application in the closet and ceaseless exertion in the field. Imbued 

 with the prevalent doctrine of the English school of geology, which 

 lias worked its way to distinction by a steady accumulation of facts, 

 Mr. Lyell first visited the region of extinct volcanos in central France ; 

 where, I might almost say, in the nervous language of Professor 

 Sedgwick, " he acquired a new geological sense, and a new faculty 

 of induction." 



In our tour along the southern shores of the Mediterranean, and 

 subsequently in the North of Italy, Mr. Lyell's particular attention 

 was directed to the distribution of the tertiary strata into new groups, 

 according to the proportional number of shells, identical with living 

 species found fossil in each formation. We had convinced ourselves, 

 that the highly inclined strata of the valley of the Bormida, consisting 

 chiefly of green sand, and the same beds, which re-appear in the Su- 

 perga near Turin, constituted a tertiary group of higher antiquity than 

 the more horizontal Sub-Apennine marls which skirt the southern 

 borders of the plains of the Po ; and we were informed by that 

 lamented zoologist, Signor Bonelli, that the fossil shells of the Su- 

 perga differed, as a group, from those of Parma and other parts of the 

 Sub-Apennines. On the other hand, Signor Bonelli had identified a 

 great portion of the shells of the Superga with the characteristic tertiary 

 shells of the Bordeaux basin and the South of France. In confir- 

 mation of these views, he exhibited to us the shells collected from 

 France and Italy in the Museum at Turin, pointing out at the same 

 time that, although some recent species occurred in the Superga 

 beds, they were fewer in number than those in the blue marl and 

 yellow sands of the Sub-Apennines. 



When I recrossed the Alps, Mr. Lyell directed his course to the 

 south, and first carefully examined the great collection of Sub-Apen- 

 nine shells of Professor Guidotti of Parma, amounting to more than 

 one thousand species, with a view of obtaining from that comparison 

 the proportion of living analogues. He next proceeded to interro- 

 gate nature in Naples and Sicily, where disturbing forces have been 

 continually in action from remote antiquity ; hoping to ascertain 

 whether successive and distinct creations of organic remains, might 

 not have been elevated from beneath the sea, by a series of sub- 

 terranean convulsions, continued from the period of the mixed 

 Sub-Apennine deposits, uninterruptedly to the historic sera. By 

 letters addressed to myself and others from Naples, it was clear- 

 that Mr. Lyell was beginning to unfold the true papyri of geo- 

 logical history ; and his subsequent discoveries in Sicily proved, 

 that there were many places in which the extinct species had nearly 

 disappeared, and that amid vast accumulations of marine shells, 

 entering into the composition of mountains of no inconsider- 

 able altitude, nearly all were specifically identical with those now 

 inhabiting the adjoining sea. At this period, therefore, he had, by a 



