Welcome from Geologists 359 
than the heart-and-soul manner in which he put himself in my place 
and thought what would be best to do.” 
Within a few days of Darwin’s arrival in London we find Lyell 
writing to Owen as follows: 
“Mrs Lyell and I expect a few friends here on Saturday next, 
29th [October], to an early tea party at eight o’clock, and it will give 
us great pleasure if you can join it. Among others you will meet 
Mr Charles Darwin, whom I believe you have seen, just returned 
from South America, where he has laboured for zoologists as well as 
for hammer-bearers. I have also asked your friend Broderip2.” It 
would probably be on this occasion that the services of Owen were 
secured for the work on the fossil bones sent home by Darwin. 
On November 2nd, we find Lyell introducing Darwin as his guest 
at the Geological Society Club ; on December 14th, Lyell and Stokes 
proposed Darwin as a member of the Club; between that date and 
May 3rd of the following year, when his election to the Club took 
place, he was several times dining as a guest. 
On January 4th, 1837, as we have already seen, Darwin was 
formally admitted to the Geological Society, and on the same evening 
he read his first paper* before the Society, Observations of proofs 
of recent elevation on the coast of Chili, made during the Survey 
of H.M.S. “ Beagle,’ commanded by Captain FitzRoy, R.N. By 
C. Darwin, F.G.S. This paper was preceded by one on the same 
subject by Mr A. Caldcleugh, and the reading of a letter and other 
communications from the Foreign Office also relating to the earth- 
quakes in Chili. 
At the meeting of the Council of the Geological Society on 
February 1st, Darwin was nominated as a member of the new 
Council, and he was elected on February 17th. 
The meeting of the Geological Society on April 19th was devoted 
to the reading by Owen of his paper on Toxodon, perhaps the most 
remarkable of the fossil mammals found by Darwin in South America; 
and at the next meeting, on May 3rd, Darwin himself read A Sketch 
of the Deposits containing extinct Mammalia in the neighbourhood 
of the Plata. The next following meeting, on May 17th, was 
devoted to Darwin’s Coral-reef paper, entitled On certain areas of 
elevation and subsidence in the Pacific and Indian Oceans, as 
deduced from the study of Coral Formations. Neither of these 
three early papers of Darwin were published in the Transactions 
of the Geological Society, but the minutes of the Council show 
1 DL. L.1. p. 275. 2 The Life of Richard Owen, London, 1894, Vol. 1. p, 102. 
3 I have already pointed out that the notes read at the Geological Society on Nov. 18, 
1835 were extracts made by Sedgwick from letters sent to Henslow, and not a paper sent 
home for publication by Darwin. 
