342 Darwin and Geology 
of the Huttonian teaching, would be assertions that chalk-flints were 
intrusions of molten silica, that fossil wood and other petrifactions 
had been impregnated with fused materials, that heat—but never 
water—was always the agent by which the induration and crystallisa- 
tion of rock-materials (even siliceous conglomerate, limestone and 
rock-salt) had been effected! These extravagant “anti-Wernerian 
views the young student might well regard as not one whit less 
absurd and repellant than the doctrine of the “aqueous precipitation 
of basalt. There is no evidence that Darwin, even if he ever heard 
of. them, was ini any way impressed, in his early career, by the 
suggestive passages in Hutton and Playfair, to which Lyell afterwards 
called attention, and which foreshadowed the main principles of 
Uniformitarianism. 
As a matter of fact, I believe that the influence of Hutton and 
Playfair in the development of a philosophical theory of geology has 
been very greatly exaggerated by later writers on the subject. Just 
as Wells and Matthew anticipated the views of Darwin on Natural 
Selection, but without producing any real influence on the course of 
biological thought, so Hutton and Playfair adumbrated doctrines 
which only became the basis of vivifying theory in the hands of 
Lyell. Alfred Russel Wallace has very justly remarked that when 
Lyell wrote the Principles of Geology, “the doctrines of Hutton and 
Playfair, so much in advance of their age, seemed to be utterly 
forgotten.” In proof of this it is only necessary to point to the 
works of the great masters of English geology, who preceded Lyell, 
in which the works of Hutton and his followers are scarcely ever 
mentioned. This is true even of the Researches in Theoretical 
Geology and the other works of the sagacious De la Beche’. Darwin 
himself possessed a copy of Playfair’s Illustrations of the Huttonian 
Theory, and occasionally quotes it; but I have met with only one 
reference to Hutton, and that a somewhat enigmatical one, in all 
Darwin’s writings. In a letter to Lyell in 1841, when his mind was 
much exercised concerning glacial questions, he says “ What a grand 
new feature all this ice work is in Geology! How old Hutton would 
have stared*.” 
As a consequence of the influences brought to bear on his mind 
1 Quarterly Review, Vol. oxxvr. (1869), p. 363. 
2 Of the strength and persistence of the prejudice felt against Lyell’s views by his 
contemporaries, I had a striking illustration some little time after Lyell’s death. One 
of the old geologists who in the early years of the century had done really good work 
in connection with the Geological Society expressed a hope that I was not ‘one of those 
who had been carried away by poor Lyell’s fads.” My surprise was indeed great when 
further conversation showed me that the whole of the Principles were included in the 
“fads”! 
3M. L. 11. p. 149. 
