THE GROWTH OF A PURPOSE.
Shortly after he had donned the bachelor's hood Lyell came to London,
was entered at Lincoln's Inn, and studied law in the office of a special
pleader. Science was not forsaken, for in March, 1819, he was elected a
Fellow of the Geological Society, and about the same time joined the
Linnean Society. Before very long his legal studies were interrupted.
His eyes became so weak that a complete rest was prescribed;
accordingly, in the autumn of 1820, he accompanied his father on a
journey to Rome. During this but little was done in geology, for the
travellers spent almost all their time in towns.
On his return, so far as can be inferred from the few letters which have
been published, Lyell continued to work at geology, and at Christmas,
1821, was seeking in vain for freshwater fossils in the neighbourhood of
Bartley. In the spring of 1822 he investigated the Sussex coast from
Hastings to Dungeness, and studied the effects of the sea at Winchelsea
and Rye. In the early summer of 1823 he visited the Isle of Wight, and
in a letter to Dr. Mantell suggested that the "blue marl"[9] in Compton
Chine is identical with that at Folkestone, and compared the underlying
strata with those in Sussex, clearing up some confusions, into which
earlier observers had fallen, about the Wealden and Lower Greensand. He
was now evidently beginning to get a firm grip on the subject--a thing
far from easy in days when so little had been ascertained--and this year
he read his first papers to the Geological Society--one, in January,
written in conjunction with Dr. Mantell, "On the Limestone and Clay of
the Ironsand in Sussex"; the other in June, "On the Sections presented
by Some Forfarshire Rivers." Also, on February 7th, he was elected one
of the secretaries of that Society, an office which he retained till
1826. This is a pretty clear proof that he had begun to make his mark
among geologists, and was well esteemed by the leaders of the science.
No sooner had he returned from the Isle of Wight than he started for
Paris, going direct from London to Calais, in the _Earl of Liverpool_
steam packet, "in 11 hours! 120 miles! engines 80 horse-power for 240
tons." In the last letter written to his father before quitting England
he refers to our neighbours across the Channel in the following terms:
"My opinion of the French people is that they are much too corrupt for a
free government and much too enlightened for a despotic one." That was
written full seventy years ago; perhaps even now, were he alive, he
would not be disposed to withdraw the words.
At Paris he was well received by Cuvier, Humboldt, and other men of
science, attended lectures at the Jardin du Roi, and saw a good deal of
society. His letters home often contain interesting references to
matters political and social--such as, for example, the following
remarks which he heard from the mouth of Humboldt: "You cannot conceive
how striking and ludicrous a feature it is in Parisian society at
present that every other man one meets is either minister or
ex-minister. So frequent have been the changes. The instant a new
ministry is formed, a body of sappers and miners is organised. They work
industriously night and day. At last the ministers find that they are
supplanted by the very arts by which a few months ago they raised
themselves to power."[10] Lyell more than once expresses a regret,
which, indeed, was generally felt in scientific circles, that Cuvier had
lost caste by "dabbling so much with the dirty pool of politics"; and
himself works away at geology, studying the fossils of the Paris basin
in the museums, and visiting the most noted sections in order to add to
his own collection and observe the relations of the strata.
He returned to England towards the end of September, and no doubt spent
the next few months in working at geology as far as his eyes, which were
becoming stronger, permitted. The summer of 1824 was devoted to
geological expeditions. In the earlier part he took Mons. Constant
Prevost, one of the leaders of geology in France, to the west of
England. Their special purpose was to examine the Jurassic rocks, but
they extended their tour as far as Cornwall. Afterwards Lyell went to
Scotland, where he was joined by Professor Buckland; and the two
friends, after spending a few days in Ross-shire, went to Brora, and
then returned from Inverness by the Caledonian canal. This gave them the
opportunity of examining the famous "parallel roads" of Glenroy, which
were the more interesting because they had already seen something of
the kind near Cowl, in Ross-shire. Afterwards they went up Glen Spean
and crossed the mountains to Blair Athol, visiting the noted locality in
Glen Tilt, where Hutton made his famous discovery of veins of granite
intrusive in the schists of that valley, and then they made their way to
Edinburgh. Here much work was done, both among collections and in the
field, and it was lightened--as might be expected in a place so
hospitable--by social pleasures and friendly converse with some of the
leading literary and scientific men.
Four years of comparative rest and frequent change of scene had produced
such an improvement in the condition of his eyes that he was able to
resume his study of the law, and was called to the Bar in 1825. For two
years he went on the Western Circuit, having chambers in the Temple and
getting a little business. But, as his correspondence shows, geology
still held the first place in his affections,[11] and papers were read
to the Society from time to time. Among them one of the most important,
though it was not printed in their journal, described a dyke of
serpentine which cut through the Old Red Sandstone on the Kinnordy
estate.[12] But, as is shown by a letter to his sister, written in the
month of November, he had not lost his interest in entomology. At that
time the collectors of insects in Scotland were very few in number, and
the English lepidopterists welcomed the specimens which Lyell and his
sister had caught in Forfarshire. The family had left Bartley Lodge in
the earlier part of the year and had settled in the old home at
Kinnordy. About this time also Lyell began to contribute to the
_Quarterly Review_, writing articles on educational and scientific
topics. This led to a friendship with Lockhart, who became editor at the
end of 1825, and gave him an introduction to Sir Walter Scott. A
Christmas visit to Cambridge introduced him to the social life of that
university.
In the spring of 1827 his ideas as to his future work appear to have
begun to assume a definite form. To Dr. Mantell[13] he writes that he
has been reading Lamarck, and is not convinced by that author's theories
of the development of species, "which would prove that men may have come
from the ourang-outang," though he makes this admission: "After all,
what changes a 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 have never passed into recent ones!" The next sentence
is significant: "That the earth is quite as old as he [Lamarck] supposes
has long been my creed, and I will try before six months are over to
convert the readers of the _Quarterly_ to that heterodox opinion."[14] A
few lines further on come some sentences which indicate that the
leading idea of the "Principles" was even then floating in his mind. "I
am going to write in confirmation of ancient causes having been the same
as modern, and to show that those plants and animals, which we know are
becoming preserved now, are the same as were formerly." Hence, he
proceeds to argue, it is not safe to infer that because the remains of
certain classes of plants or animals are not found in particular strata,
the creatures themselves did not then exist. "You see the drift of my
argument," he continues; "_ergo_, mammalia existed when the oolite and
coal, etc., were formed."[15] The first of these quotations strikes the
keynote of modern geology as opposed to the older notions of the
science; what follows suggests a caution, to which Darwin afterwards
drew more particular attention, though he turned the weapon against
Lyell himself, viz. "the imperfection of the geological record."
A letter to his father, also written in the month of April, shows that,
while he has an immediate purpose of opening fire on MacCulloch,[16] who
had bitterly attacked in the _Westminster Review_ Scrope's book upon
Volcanoes, he has "come to the conclusion that something of a more
scientific character is wanted, for which the pages of a periodical are
not fitted." He might, he says, write an elementary book, like Mrs.
Marcet's "Conversations on Chemistry," but something on a much larger
scale evidently is floating on his mind. In this letter also he
discusses his prospects with his father, who apparently had suggested
that he should cease from going on circuit; and argues that he gains
time by appearing to be engaged in a profession, for "friends have no
mercy on the man who is supposed to have some leisure time, and heap
upon him all kinds of unremunerative duties." Lyell was not devoid of
Scotch shrewdness, and doubtless early learnt that when it is all work
and no pay men see your merits through a magnifying glass, but when it
comes to the question of a reward, they shift the instrument to your
defects.
Gradually the plan of the future book assumed a more definite shape in
his mind, as we can see from a letter to Dr. Mantell early in 1828.
About this time also Murchison, with whom he was planning a long visit
to Auvergne,[17] appears among his correspondents. Herschel[18] tells
him how he and Faraday had melted in a furnace "granite into a slag-like
lava"; Hooker[19] begs him to notice the connection between plants and
soils as he travels; his father urges him to take his clerk with him to
act as amanuensis and save his eyes, which might be affected by the
glare of the sun, and to help him generally in collecting specimens and
carrying the barometers. Early in the month of May he started for Paris,
where he met Mr. and Mrs. Murchison, and the party left for Clermont
Ferrand in a "light open carriage, with post horses." As far as Moulins
the roads were bad, but as they receded from Paris and approached the
mountains "the roads and the rates of posting improved, so that we
averaged nine miles an hour, and the change of horses [was] almost as
quick as in England. The politeness of the people has much delighted us,
and they are so intelligent that we get much geology from them."
Clermont Ferrand became their headquarters for some time, and Lyell's
letters to his father are full of notes on the geology of the district,
one of the most interesting in Europe. The great plateau which rises on
the western side of the broad valley of the Allier is studded with cones
and craters--some so fresh that one might imagine their last eruptions
to have happened during the decline of the Roman empire;[20] others in
almost every stage of dissection by the scalpels of nature. Streams of
lava, still rough and clinkery, have poured themselves over the plateau
and have run down the valleys till they have reached the plain of the
Allier, while huge fragments of flows far larger and more ancient have
been carved by the action of rain and rivers into natural bastions, and
now may be seen resting upon stratified marls, crowded with freshwater
shells and other organisms,--the remnants of deposits accumulated in
great lakes, which had been already drained in ages long before man
appeared on the earth.
The two geologists worked hard, for who could be idle in such a country
as this? They often began at six in the morning and rested not till
evening, though the summers are hot in Auvergne, and this one was
exceptionally so. Lyell writes home, "I never did so much real geology
in so many days." Mrs. Murchison also was "very diligent, sketching,
labelling specimens, and making out shells, in which last she is a
valuable assistant." Sometimes they went farther afield, visiting
Pontgibaud and the gorge of the Sioul, where they found a section
previously unnoticed, which gave them a clear proof that a lava-stream
had dammed up the course of a river by flowing down into its valley, and
had converted the part above into a lake. This again had been drained as
the river had carved for itself a new channel, partly in the basalt,
partly in the underlying gneiss. Here, then, was a clear proof that a
river could cut out a path for itself, and that forces still in
operation were sufficient, given time enough, to sculpture the features
of the earth's crust. Notwithstanding the hard work, the outdoor life
suited Lyell, who writes that his "eyes were never in such condition
before." Murchison, too, was generally in good health, but would have
been better, according to his companion, if he had been a little more
abstemious at table and a worse customer to the druggist.
From Clermont Ferrand the travellers moved on to the Cantal, where they
investigated the lacustrine deposits beneath the lava-streams all around
Aurillac. These deposits exhibited on a grand scale the phenomena which
Lyell had already observed on a small one in the marls of the loch at
Kinnordy. Thence they went on through the Ardeche and examined the "pet
volcanoes of the Vivarais," as they had been termed by Scrope. The
Murchisons now began to suffer from the heat, for it was the middle of
July. Nevertheless, they still pushed on southwards, and after visiting
the old towns of Gard and the Bouches du Rhone, went along the Riviera
to Nice, having been delayed for a time at Frejus, where Murchison had a
sharp attack of malarious fever. It was an exceptionally dry summer, and
the town in consequence was malodorous; so after a short halt, they
moved on to Milan and at last arrived at Padua, working at geology as
they went along, and constantly accumulating new facts. From Padua they
visited Monte Bolca, noted for its fossil fish, the Vicentin, with its
sheets of basalt, and the Euganean Hills, where the "volcanic phenomena
[were] just Auvergne over again." Then the travellers parted, the
Murchisons turning northward to the Tyrol, while Lyell continued on his
journey southward to Naples and Sicily.
Some four months had now been spent, almost without interruption, in
hard work and the daily questioning of Nature. The results had surpassed
even Lyell's anticipations; they had thrown light upon the geological
phenomena of the remote past, and cleared up many difficulties which,
hitherto, had impeded the path of the investigators. On the coast of the
Maritime Alps Lyell had found huge beds of conglomerate, parted one from
another by laminated shales full of fossils, most of which were
identical with creatures still living in the Mediterranean. These masses
attained a thickness of 800 feet, and were displayed in the sides of a
valley fifteen miles in length. They supplied a case parallel with that
of the conglomerates and sandstones of Angus, and indicated that no
extraordinary conditions--no deluges or earth shatterings--had been
needed in order to form them. If the torrents from the Maritime Alps, as
they plunged into the Mediterranean, could build up these masses of
stratified pebbles, why not appeal to the same agency in Scotland,
though the mountains from which they flowed, and the sheet of water into
which they plunged, have alike vanished? The great flows of basalt--some
fresh and intact, some only giant fragments of yet vaster masses--the
broken cones of scoria, and the rounded hills of trachyte in Auvergne,
had supplied him with links between existing volcanoes and the huge
masses of trap with which Scotland had made him familiar; while these
basalt flows--modern in a geological sense, but carved and furrowed by
the streams which still were flowing in their gorges--showed that rain
and rivers were most potent, if not exclusive, agents in the excavation
of valleys. "The whole tour," thus he wrote to his father, "has been
rich, as I had anticipated (and in a manner which Murchison had not), in
those analogies between existing nature and the effects of causes in
remote eras which it will be the great object of my work to point out. I
scarcely despair now, so much do these evidences of modern action
increase upon us as we go south (towards the more recent volcanic seat
of action) of _proving_ the positive identity of the causes now
operating with those of former times."[21]
One important result of this journey was a conjoint paper on the
excavation of valleys in Auvergne, which was written before the friends
parted, and was read at the Geological Society in the later part of the
year. Lyell writes thus to one of his sisters from Rome, on his return
thither, in the following January[22]:--
"My letters from geological friends are very satisfactory as to the
unusual interest excited in the Geological Society by our paper on the
excavation of valleys in Auvergne. Seventy persons present the second
evening, and a warm debate. Buckland and Greenough furious, _contra_
Scrope, Sedgwick, and Warburton supporting us. These were the first two
nights in our new _magnificent_ apartments at Somerset House." He adds,
"Longman has paid down 500 _guineas_ to Mr. Ure, of Dublin, for a
popular work on geology, just coming out. It is to prove the Hebrew
cosmogony, and that we ought all to be burnt in Smithfield."
On the way to Naples, Lyell made several halts: at Parma, Bologna,
Florence, Siena, Viterbo, and Rome; visiting local geologists, studying
their collections of fossil shells, keeping his eye more especially on
the relations which the species exhibited with the fauna still existing
in the Mediterranean, and losing no opportunity of examining the ancient
volcanic vents and the crater lakes, which form in places such
remarkable features in the landscape. "The shells in the travertine," he
writes, "are all real species living in Italy, so you perceive that the
volcanoes had thrown out their ash, pumice, etc., and these had become
covered with lakes, and then the valleys had been hollowed out, all
before Rome was built, 2,500 years and more ago."
On reaching Naples, he climbed Vesuvius, and saw for the first time the
lava-streams and piles of scoria of a volcano still active; while the
wonderful sections of the old crater of Somma furnished a link between
the living present and the remote past--between Italy and Auvergne. He
visited Ischia, where another delightful surprise awaited him, for on
its old volcano, Monte Epomeo, he found, at a height of 2,000 feet above
the sea, marine shells which belonged "to the same class as those in the
lower regions of Ischia." They were contained in a mass of clay, and
were quite unaltered. This was a great discovery, for the existence of
these fossils "had not been dreamt of," and it showed that the land had
been elevated to this extent without any appreciable change in the fauna
inhabiting the Mediterranean. Except for this, the island was "an
admirable illustration of Mont Dore." He made an excursion also to the
Temples of Paestum, wonderful from the weird beauty of their ruins, on
the flat plain between the Apennines and the sea, but with interest
geological as well as archaeological, because of the blocks of rough
travertine with which their columns are built. These he studied, and he
visited the quarries from which they were hewn. His letters frequently
contain interesting references to the tyranny of the Government, "the
inquisitorial suppression of all cultivation of science, whether moral
or physical," the idle, happy-go-lucky habits of the common people, the
prevalent mendicancy, universal dishonesty, and general corruption. One
instance may be worth quoting--it indicates the material with which
"United Italy " has had to deal. He wanted to pre-pay the postage of a
letter to England. The head waiter at his hotel had said to him, "'Mind,
if it is to England you only pay fifteen grains' (sous). I thought the
hint a trait of character, as they are all suspicious of one another.
The clerk demanded twenty-five. I remonstrated, but he insisted, and, as
he was dressed and had the manners of a gentleman, I paid. When I found
on my return that I had been cozened, I asked the head waiter, with some
indignation, 'Is it possible that the Government officers are all
knaves?' 'Sono Napolitani, Signor; la sua eccellenza mi scusera, ma io
sono Romano!'"[23] The old proverb, what is bred in the bone will out in
the flesh, still holds good; but we may doubt whether the standard of
virtue is quite so high as the speaker intimated in certain other
provinces which Piedmont has acquired at the price of the cradle of the
royal house and some of the best blood of the nation.
At Naples, Lyell was detained longer than he had expected, waiting for a
Government steamer. "There was," he says, "no other way of going, for
the pirates of Tripoli have taken so many Neapolitan vessels that no one
who has not a fancy to see Africa will venture." But he arrived in
Sicily before the end of November, and succeeded in reaching the summit
of Etna on the first of December. He was only just in time, for the next
day bad weather set in, snow fell heavily, and the summit of the
mountain became practically inaccessible for the winter. But as it was,
he was able to examine carefully another active volcano, the phenomena
of which corresponded with those of Vesuvius, though on a grander scale.
From Nicolosi, where he was delayed a day or two by the weather, Lyell
went along the Catanian plain to Syracuse and southward to the extreme
point of the island, Cape Passaro. From this headland he followed the
coast westward as far as Girgenti, and then struck across the island in
an easterly direction till he came within about a day's journey of
Catania, and then he turned off in a north-westerly direction through
the island to Palermo. In this zigzag journey, which occupied about five
weeks, he succeeded in obtaining a good general knowledge of the geology
of the eastern part of the island; he examined many sections and
collected many fossils, thus obtaining material for an accurate
classification of the little-known deposits of the Sicilian lowland, and
in addition he lost no opportunity of studying the relations of the
volcanic masses, wherever they occurred, to the sedimentary strata. As
his letters show, bad roads, poor fare, and miserable accommodation made
the journey anything but one of pleasure; but its results, as he wrote
to Murchison, "exceeded his warmest expectations in the way of modern
analogies."
By December 10th he was once more back in the Bay of Naples. As he
returned through Rome he availed himself of the opportunity of examining
the travertines of Tivoli, which, as he remarked, presented more
analogies with those of Sicily than of Auvergne, and welcomed the news
that the bones of an elephant had been found in an alluvial deposit
which lay beneath the lava of an extinct Tuscan volcano. His notes also
prove that he was beginning to see his way to the classification of the
extensive deposits of sand and marl in Italy and Sicily, which were
subsequently recognised as belonging to the Pliocene era.
Early in February Lyell reached Geneva on his homeward journey, after
crossing the Mont Cenis, and by the 19th was back in Paris among his
geological friends, "pumping them," as he says, and being well pumped in
return. Some of them, he finds, "have come by most opposite routes to
the same conclusions as myself, and we have felt mutually confirmed in
our views, although the new opinions must bring about an amazing
overthrow in the systems which we were carefully taught ten years ago."
The accurate knowledge of Deshayes, one of the most eminent
conchologists of that day, was especially helpful in bringing his field
work in Italy and Sicily into clear and definite order, and he obtained
from him a promise of tables of more than 2,000 species of Tertiary
shells, from which (he writes to his sister Caroline, who shared his
entomological tastes) "I will build up a system on data never before
obtained, by comparing the contents of the present with more ancient
seas, and the latter with each other."[24]
By the end of February he is back in London and at the Geological
Society, defending his views on the constancy of Nature's
operations--views which seemed rank heresy to the older school, who
sought to solve every difficulty by a convulsion, and were fettered in
their interpretation of the records of geology by supposed theological
necessities. In April Lyell writes thus to Dr. Mantel[25]:--
"A splendid meeting [at the Geological Society] last night,
Sedgwick in the chair. Conybeare's paper on Valley of the
Thames, directed against Messrs. Lyell and Murchison's
former paper, was read in part. Buckland present to defend
the 'Diluvialists,' as Conybeare styles his sect; and us he
terms 'Fluvialists.' Greenough assisted us by making an
ultra speech on the importance of modern causes....
Murchison and I fought stoutly, and Buckland was very piano.
Conybeare's memoir is not strong by any means. He admits
three deluges before the Noachian! and Buckland adds God
knows how many _catastrophes_ besides; so we have driven
them out of the Mosaic record fairly."
Again, in the month of June, he writes to the same correspondent in
regard to the second portion of the same paper[26]:--
"The last discharge of Conybeare's artillery, served by the
great Oxford engineer against the Fluvialists, as they are
pleased to term us, drew upon them on Friday a sharp volley
of musketry from all sides, and such a broadside, at the
finale, from Sedgwick as was enough to sink the 'Reliquiae
Diluvianae'[27] for ever, and make the second volume shy of
venturing out to sea."
In a third letter, written to Dr. Fleming, he gives a similar account of
the battle between the Diluvialists and Fluvialists, and concludes with
these words[28]:--
"I am preparing a general work on the younger epochs of the
earth's history, which I hope to be out with next spring. I
begin with Sicily, which has almost entirely risen from the
sea, to the height of nearly 4,000 feet, since all the
present animals existed in the Mediterranean!"
FOOTNOTES:
[9] Now recognised as gault. The identification named above was soon
found to be correct.
[10] Life, Letters, and Journals, vol. i. p. 127. Some sentences (for
the sake of brevity) are omitted from the quotation.
[11] He was also elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1826.
[12] It appeared in the _Edin. Journ. Sci._, iii. (1825) p. 112, being
his first actual publication. Its importance consisted in proving that
serpentine was, or rather had been, an igneous rock. If proper attention
had been paid to it, fewer mistaken statements and hypotheses would have
attained the dignity of appearing in print.
[13] Dr. Gideon A. Mantell, a surgeon by profession, at that time
resident in Lewes, who made valuable contributions to the geology of
South-East England, and was also distinguished for his popular lectures
and books. He died in 1852.
[14] Probably referring to an article on Scrope's "Geology of Central
France," in which he shows that he fully accepted the Huttonian doctrine
of interpreting the geology of past ages by reference to the causes
still at work. It appeared in the _Quarterly Review_, Oct. 1827, vol.
xxxvi. p. 437.
[15] Life, Letters, and Journals, vol. i. p. 169.
[16] Dr. John MacCulloch, author (among other works) of the "Highlands
and Western Isles of Scotland." He was an excellent geologist on the
mineralogical side, but had little sympathy with palaeontology or with
the views to which Lyell inclined. He died in 1835.
[17] This district had been already explored by Mr. G. P. Scrope, the
first edition of whose classic work, "The Volcanoes of Central France,"
was published in 1826.
[18] Sir John F. W. Herschel, the second of the illustrious astronomers
of that name.
[19] Sir W. J. Hooker.
[20] Certain passages in a letter of Sidonius Apollinaris, Bishop of
Clermont, dated about 460 A.D., and in the works of Alcimus Avitus,
Archbishop of Vienne, about half a century later, have been interpreted
as referring to volcanic eruptions somewhere in Auvergne. This, however,
is disputed by many authorities. (See _Geological Magazine_, 1865, p.
241.)
[21] Life, Letters, and Journals, vol. i. p. 199.
[22] Life, Letters, and Journals, vol. i. p. 238.
[23] Life, Letters, and Journals, vol. i. p. 215.
[24] Life, Letters, and Journals, vol. i. p. 252.
[25] _Ibid._
[26] _Ut supra_, p. 253.
[27] "Reliquiae Diluvianae, or Observations on Organic Remains contained
in Caves, Fissures, and Diluvial Gravel, and on other Geological
Phenomena attesting the Action of an Universal Deluge." By Professor
Buckland. 1823.
[28] _Ut supra_, p. 254.