At the Geological Society 357 
after a stormy and troublous career, he retired from the society 
in 1832. In all the writings of the great pioneers in English geology, 
Hutton and his splendid generalisation are scarcely ever referred to. 
The great doctrines of Uniformitarianism, which he had foreshadowed, 
were completely ignored, and only his extravagances of “anti- 
Wernerianism” seem to have been remembered. 
When between 1830 and 1832, Lyell, taking up the almost for- 
gotten ideas of Hutton, von Hoff and Prevost, published that bold 
challenge to the Catastrophists—the Principles of Geology—he was 
met with the strongest opposition, not only from the outside world, 
which was amused by his “absurdities” and shocked by his “im- 
piety ’—but not less from his fellow-workers and friends in the 
Geological Society. For Lyell’s numerous original observations, and 
his diligent collection of facts his contemporaries had nothing but 
admiration, and they cheerfully admitted him to the highest offices 
in the society, but they met his reasonings on geological theory 
with vehement opposition and his conclusions with coldness and 
contempt. 
There is, indeed, a very striking parallelism between the recep- 
tion of the Principles of Geology by Lyell’s contemporaries and the 
manner in which the Origin of Species was met a quarter of a 
century later, as is so vividly described by Huxley’. Among Lyell’s 
fellow-geologists, two only—G. Poulett Scrope and John Herschel?— 
declared themselves from the first his strong supporters. Scrope in 
two luminous articles in the Quarterly Review did for Lyell what 
Huxley accomplished for Darwin in his famous review in the Times ; 
but Scrope unfortunately was at that time immersed in the stormy 
sea of politics, and devoted his great powers of exposition to the 
preparation of fugitive pamphlets. Herschel, like Scrope, was un- 
able to support Lyell at the Geological Society, owing to his absence 
on the important astronomical mission to the Cape. 
It thus came about that, in the frequent conflicts of opinion 
within the walls of the Geological Society, Lyell had to bear the 
brunt of battle for Uniformitarianism quite alone, and it is to be 
1 L, L, a. pp. 179—204, 
2 Both Lyell and Darwin fully realised the value of the support of these two friends. 
Scrope in his appreciative reviews of the Principles justly pointed out what was the 
weakest point, the inadequate recognition of sub-aerial as compared with marine 
denudation, Darwin also admitted that Scrope had to a great extent forestalled him 
in his theory of Foliation. Herschel from the first insisted that the leading idea of 
the Principles must be applied to organic as well as to inorganic nature and must explain 
the appearance of new species (see Lyell’s Life and Letters, Vol. 1. p. 467). Darwin tells 
us that Herschel’s Introduction to the Study of Natural Philosophy with Humboldt’s 
Personal Narrative ‘‘atirred up in me a burning zeal” in his undergraduate days. I once 
heard Lyell exclaim with fervour ‘‘If ever there was a heaven-born genius it was 
John Herschel!” 
