Claypole on (Darwin and Geology. 219 
•editions of Lyell's "Princij^les" published after the appearance 
of the " Origin." While fully adopting the new views therein 
propounded, the caution of his character is manifest in his mode 
of writing of them. Thus in the edition of 1872 he says, in 
striking contrast to the extract given above from that of 1853: — 
"In former editions of this work I did not venture to differ 
from the opinion of Linnjeus that each species had remained 
from its origin such as we now see it, being variable but onl}' 
within certain limits." "But I undertook to show that the 
gradual extinction of species one after another was part of the 
constant and regular course of nature." "I suggested also that 
the coming in of new species was also probably successive." 
"In truth there are as yet only two rival hypotheses between 
which we have to make our choice in regard to the origin of 
species — namely, that of special creation and, that of creation by 
variation and natural selection." 
Again, speaking of the facts of geographical distribution, he 
says: "They accord well with the theory of variation and of 
natural selection, but with no other hypothesis yet proposed for 
explaining the origin of species." 
But the crowning proof of the influence of Darwin over Lyell 
was given when the "Antiquity of Man" appeared in 1863. It 
is easy to see from the general tenor of this work that Darwin's 
doctrine had sunk deep into the mind of the great but formerly 
half-way-halting Uniformitarian teacher. Though here, as 
>.everywhere else, writing with caution it is manifest that he was 
then prepared to go to the full length required by the theory 
of variation as expounded in the "Origin." He had even risen 
superior to the great difficulty, partly arising from prejudice 
-and partly from tradition — the difficulty of admitting that man 
■himself was held in the toils of the evolutionary net and that he 
was himself a link in the long chain of organic beings — the last 
.and greatest but still only a link. 
He says in some memorable words, more memorable still 
when we remember the date of their publication. 
"A theory that establishes a connection between the absence of all relics 
• of vertebrata in the oldest fossiliferous rocks and the presence of man's 
remains in the northwest; which affords an explanation of the successive 
