350 Darwin and Geology 
book on Transmutation of Species. Had been greatly struck from 
about the month of previous March on character of South American 
fossils...” 
The second volume of Lyell’s Principles of Geology was published 
in January, 1832, and Darwin’s copy (like that of the other two 
volumes, in a sadly dilapidated condition from constant use) has 
in it the inscription, “Charles Darwin, Monte Video. Nov. 1832.” 
As everyone knows, Darwin in dedicating the second edition of his 
Journal of the Voyage to Lyell declared, “the chief part of whatever 
scientific merit this journal and the other works of the author 
may possess, has been derived from studying the well-known and 
admirable Principles of Geology.” 
In the first chapter of this second volume of the Principles, Lyell 
insists on the importance of the species question to the geologist, but 
goes on to point out the difficulty of accepting the only serious 
attempt at a transmutation theory which had up to that time 
appeared—that of Lamarck. In subsequent chapters he discusses 
the questions of the modification and variability of species, of 
hybridity, and of the geographical distribution of plants and animals. 
He then gives vivid pictures of the struggle for existence, ever going 
on between various species, and of the causes which lead to their 
extinction—not by overwhelming catastrophies, but by the silent 
and almost unobserved action of natural causes. This leads him to 
consider theories with regard to the introduction of new species, 
and, rejecting the fanciful notions of “centres or foci of creation,” 
he argues strongly in favour of the view, as most reconcileable with 
observed facts, that “each species may have had its origin in a single 
pair, or individual, where an individual was sufficient, and species may 
have been created in succession at such times and in such places 
as to enable them to multiply and endure for an appointed period, 
and occupy an appointed space on the globe*.” 
lL. L.1. p. 276, 
2 Principles of Geology, Vol. u. (1st edit. 1832), p. 124. We now know, as has been 
so well pointed out by Huxley, that Lyell, as early as 1827, was prepared to accept 
the doctrine of the transmutation of species. In that year he wrote to Mantell, ‘‘What 
changes species may really undergo! How impossible will it be to distinguish and lay 
down a line, beyond which some of the so-called extinct species may have never passed 
into recent ones” (Lyell’s Life and Letters, Vol. 1. p. 168). To Sir John Herschel in 1836, 
he wrote, ‘‘In regard to the origination of new species, I am very glad to find that you 
think it probable that it may be carried on through the intervention of intermediate 
causes. I left this rather to be inferred, not thinking it worth while to offend a certain 
class of persons by embodying in words what would only be a speculation” (Ibid. p. 467). 
He expressed the same views to Whewell in 1837 (Ibid. Vol. 11. p. 5), and to Sedgwick 
(Ibid. Vol. m1. p. 36) to whom he says, of “the theory, that the creation of new species is 
going on at the present day”—“‘I really entertain it,” but “I have studiously avoided 
laying the doctrine down dogmatically as capable of proof” (see Huxley in L. L. u. 
pp. 190—195). 
