EIGHT YEARS OF QUIET PROGRESS.
Both courses of lectures ended[66] and the third volume of the
"Principles" successfully launched, Mr. and Mrs. Lyell left London in
June, 1833, for another Continental tour. During their first halt, at
Paris, she was duly introduced to the famous quarries of Montmartre, and
had an opportunity of "collecting a fossil shell or two for the first
time." Thence they made their way to Bonn, which she had left as a bride
the previous summer, and, after another short halt, proceeded up the
gorge of the Rhine to Bingen, visiting on the way the ironworks at Sayn,
and examining the stratified volcanic deposits on the plain between the
river and that town. The Tertiary basin at Mayence was next visited, and
from it they went leisurely to Heidelberg. From the picturesque old town
by the Neckar they struck off to Stuttgart and to Pappenheim, examining
one or two collections at the former place, and the quarries of
Solenhofen, near the latter. These were already noted for the abundant
and well-preserved fossils obtained in the quarries worked for the
well-known "lithographic stone," though the famous Archaeopteryx had yet
to be found; that strange creature, feathered and like a bird, but with
teeth in its beak and a tail like a reptile, which has supplied such an
important link in the chain of evidence in favour of progressive
development. Thence they travelled to Nuernberg and Bayreuth, visiting
on their way the noted caves at Muggendorf, and returned to Bonn by way
of Bamberg, Wuertzburg, Aschaffenberg, and Frankfurt. In this journey,
few localities of special interest were investigated, but, as Lyell's
letters show, no opportunity was lost of discussing important questions
with local geologists, or of examining sections in the field. But on the
way back to England through Belgium a halt was made at Liege, to inspect
Dr. Schmerling's grand collection of cave-remains. It is evident, though
but a short notice of it has been preserved, that this visit kindled an
enthusiasm which was to produce important results in later years. Lyell
writes (to Mantell, after his return to England):--
"I saw at Liege the collection of Dr. Schmerling, who in
three years has, by his own exertion and the incessant
labours of a clever amateur servant, cleared out some twenty
caves untouched by any previous searcher, and has filled a
truly splendid museum. He numbers already thrice the number
of fossil cavern mammalia known when Buckland wrote his
'Idola Specus'; and such is the prodigious number of the
individuals of some species--the bears, for example, of
which he has five species, one large, one new--that several
entire skeletons will be constructed. Oh, that the Lewes
chalk had been cavernous! And he has these, and a number of
yet unexplored and shortly to be investigated holes, all to
himself: but envy him not--you cannot imagine what he feels
at being far from a metropolis which can afford him
sympathy; and having not one congenial soul at Liege, and
none who take any interest in his discoveries save the
priests--and what kind _they_ take you may guess, more
especially as he has found human remains in breccia,
embedded with the extinct species, under circumstances far
more difficult to get over than any I have previously heard
of. The _three_ coats or layers of stalagmite cited by me at
Choquier are quite true."[67]
Very probably among these human relics was one which was destined to
become famous--the skull found in the cave at Engis--for this was
described by Dr. Schmerling in his "Recherches sur les ossements
fossiles decouverts dans les cavernes de la Province de Liege," a book
published in 1833. It was found at a depth of nearly five feet, hidden
under an osseous breccia, composed of the remains of small animals, and
containing one rhinoceros tusk with several teeth of horses and of
ruminants. The earth in which it was lying did not show the slightest
trace of disturbance, and teeth of rhinoceros, horse, hyaena, and bear
surrounded it on all sides.[68] This relic proved--and since then
numbers of similar cases have been discovered--that if the man of Engis
were an antediluvian, and his corpse had been washed into the cave
together with the drowned bodies of rhinoceros, and other animals,[69]
that event, at any rate, must have corresponded with a great change in
the habits of the larger mammalia, for they had been unable to return to
haunts which once had been congenial. In other words, the foundation was
being laid, now in 1833, for the next great advance in geological
science, the contemporaneity of man and several extinct species of
mammals, indicating, of course, the antiquity of the human race. To this
point, however, public attention was not directed for nearly twenty
years. Then various causes, especially an examination into the evidence
discovered in the neighbourhood of Abbeville and Amiens by M. Boucher
de Perthes, brought the question to the front. But though the
controversy was sharp and bitter for a time, it was speedily over, and
the question which is still agitated--though mildly and in a sense
wholly scientific--is whether man appeared in this part of Europe and in
corresponding regions of North America, before, during, or after the
glacial epoch?
But the Engis skull is a relic exceptionally interesting. Though the
handiwork of primaeval man is common enough--rudely chipped instruments
or weapons of flint or other stone, worked portions of bones and
antlers, and such like--yet his bones are far less common than those of
other mammals, and, most of all, skulls are rare. Professor Huxley, in
his work from which we have already quoted, states that Dr. Schmerling
found a bone implement in the Engis cave, and worked flints in all the
ossiferous Belgian caves, yet this was the only skull in anything like a
perfect condition, though another cavern furnished two fragments of
parietal bones. Yet from the latter numerous bones of the extremities
were obtained, and these had belonged to three individuals. What
inferences, then, can be drawn from this skull as to the intellectual
rank of primaeval man? This question was discussed by its discoverer, and
the evidence has been also considered by Professor Huxley. The former
thus expressed his opinion, "that this cranium has belonged to a person
of limited intellectual faculties, and we conclude thence that it
belonged to a man of a low degree of civilisation; a deduction which is
borne out by contrasting the capacity of the frontal with that of the
occipital region." Professor Huxley sums up a careful discussion of the
evidence, in which he calls special attention to points where it happens
to be defective, by stating that the specimen agrees in certain respects
with Australian skulls, in others with some European, but that he can
find in the remains no character which, if it were a recent skull, would
give any trustworthy clue to the race to which it might appertain.
"Assuredly there is no mark of degradation about any part of its
structure. It is, in fact, a fair average human skull, which might have
belonged to a philosopher, or might have contained the thoughtless
brains of a savage."[70]
The winter of 1833 and the spring of the following year were spent in
London. It was evidently a busy, though uneventful, time: a new edition
of the "Principles" was being prepared and printed, a paper read to the
Geological Society on a freshwater formation at Cerdagne in the
Pyrenees, and information collected for a summer's journey. This was to
be in a new direction--to Scandinavia--with the more especial intent of
studying the evidence on which it has been asserted that the shores of
the Baltic had changed their level within recent times. But on this
occasion Mrs. Lyell remained at home, as the travelling might
occasionally have been too rough for her so we find, in a journal
written for her perusal, a full sketch of a tour which proved, as he had
anticipated, to be fruitful in scientific results. His first halt was at
Hamburg, where, on his arrival, with characteristic energy he dashed off
at once in a carriage to examine a section below Altona which he had
marked down on his voyage up the Elbe. This is his brief summary:
"Cliffs sixty or seventy feet high. Filled three pages of note-book. Saw
the source of the great Holstein granite blocks. Gathered shells thrown
ashore by the Elbe." From Hamburg he drove to Luebeck, along one of the
worst of roads. The primary cause of its badness was geological--a loose
sand interspersed with granite boulders; the secondary, the royal
revenues; for these largely depended on the tolls paid by vessels on
entering the sound, and if a good road had connected the two towns much
merchandise would have gone overland, to the king's loss. At Luebeck
Lyell for the first time stood upon the shore of the Baltic, and
utilised the half-hour before his steamer started for Copenhagen by
hunting for shells. As a reward, he found a well-known freshwater genus
(_Paludina_) among common marine forms.[71]
From Copenhagen a rapid journey in Seeland and to Moeen introduced him to
a number of interesting Sections of the drift, accounts of which were
afterwards worked into his books, and showed him at Faxoe and elsewhere
limestones overlying the upper chalk, like those at Maestricht in
Holland, and at Meudon near Paris. All these limestones possess an
exceptional interest, for they contain a mixture of Secondary with
Tertiary fossils, and thus help to fill up the wide gap between these
two great divisions in Britain and the adjacent parts of Europe. On his
return to Copenhagen Lyell was very kindly received by the Crown Prince,
who was an ardent naturalist, and allowed him to examine a fine
collection of minerals and fossils accumulated by himself.
After crossing the Sound to Malmoe, Lyell spent about a fortnight in
driving along an inland route through the southern part of Sweden to
Norrkoeping, while a halt at Lund afforded the opportunity of pleasant
talks with the professors of the University, and of seeing some
formations of which hitherto he had not had much experience. The terms
in which he refers to these indirectly proves what strides geology has
taken in the last sixty years. "We made an excursion together through a
country of greywacke with orthoceratite limestone and schist,[72]
containing a curious zoophyte called graptolite in great abundance, and
a few shells." On the journey also he found much to interest a
geologist--boulders almost everywhere, some of huge size, lying on the
surface or scattered in the sand in one place an outcrop of Cretaceous
greensand, full of belemnites, which were popularly regarded as
"witches' candles." Then over a picturesque granite region--"a country
of rock, fir-wood, and peasants"--till he arrived at Norrkoeping, and
made his way in a steamer down one fjord and up another until he came
into the Malar Lake. These last stages introduced him to a kind of
scenery of which Scandinavia affords such striking and innumerable
examples--the margin of a submerged mountain land. "We entered," he
says, "a passage between an endless string of islets and the mainland,
the water here smooth as a millpond. We passed swiftly on in deep water
close to the rocks, on the barest of which are a few firs in the clefts.
These are evidently the summits of submarine mountains." At Stockholm he
found plenty to be done. Some of the evidence, which had been brought
forward to prove a rising of the land, was obviously weak. For instance,
on one of his first visits to a place where the upward movement was said
to be comparatively rapid, he found a fine oak-tree, perhaps a couple of
centuries old, growing eight feet above high-water mark, and thus
indicating either that oak-trees had recently changed their habits or
that the change of level had been slow. "In dealing with this question
it is necessary," he writes, "to cross-examine both nature and man. The
testimony of the former is strong; of the latter, I must say, so weak
and contradictory that I require to know the men and find how they got
their views." A valuable precaution this, which might be remembered with
advantage in days when stay-at-home geologists are far too numerous. If
this were done, the paper currency of the science would be considerably
reduced in quantity, and there would be a closer correspondence between
its real and its nominal value. A little scepticism was certainly
justifiable, for one would-be _savant_ stood him out "that a bed of
_Cardium edule_ (the common cockle) 100 feet high proves that the _fresh
water_ of Lake Malar was once that much higher." Lyell adds nothing to
this remark, but his silence is eloquent.
This expedition, however--to Soedertelje--gave results yet more striking
than marine shells 100 feet above the present level of the Baltic. "What
think you," he writes, "of ships in the same formation, nay, a _house_?
It is as true as the Temple of Serapis.[73] I do not mean that I
discovered all this, but I shall be the first to give a geological
account of it. I am in high spirits at the prize." Upsala also, to which
he next moved, increased his stores of knowledge and of fossils. "I went
to the hill, a hundred feet high, on which the tower stands, to examine
marine shells. All of Baltic species. You remember that in the half-hour
between the two steamboats at Luebeck, or rather Travemunde, I collected
shells by the quay. Not one fossil have I found newer than the chalk in
Sweden, that was not in the number of those found living in that
half-hour." More localities for shells were visited, erratics were
examined, and pilots were questioned closely "about the agency of ice,
in which they believe." With their opinion Lyell inclined to agree; at
any rate, he was convinced that his observations would "quite overset
the _debacle_ theory," and, as he expected, "bring in ice carriage as
the cause." On the coast further north at Oregrund and Gefle,
bench-marks had been cut some years previously in order to apply a more
exact test to the question of the change in levels. These he visited,
and the former seemed to prove "as Galileo said in a different sense,
that 'the earth moves.'" The marks near Gefle afforded similar
testimony, so that he felt now that the main object of his journey was
accomplished, and inserted this pregnant note in his journal:--"I feel
now what I was very sensible of when correcting my last edition,[74]
that I was not justified in writing any more until I had done all in my
power to ascertain the truth in regard to the 'great northern
phenomenon,' as the gradual rise of part of Sweden has been very
naturally called. You will see by-and-by how important a point it was,
and how materially it will modify my mode of treating the science, and
how much it will advance the theory of the agency of existing causes as
a key to explain geological phenomena."[75]
But the work at sea-marks was not yet quite ended, and there was besides
another classic spot to be visited--Uddevalla, between Lake Werner and
the western coast. Here are deposits in which sea-shells are abundant at
a height of about two hundred feet above the sea. Nothing but a
submergence can account for their presence, for polyzoa and barnacles
are found attached to the solid rock. Some of the latter, adhering to
the gneiss, were collected by Lyell on this occasion.[76]
Fossil shells (of existing species) were so numerous that, he says, the
deposit was worked for making lime, and he compares it with a well-known
bed in the Tertiaries of the Paris Basin. The shells, however, at
Uddevalla, as he points out, are not of that brackish-water character
peculiar to the Baltic, but such as now live in the Northern Ocean.[77]
On reaching the coast he made an expedition by boat, and saw the
bench-mark at Gullholmen, and rocks which had emerged from the sea
within the memory of people still living. Here, by way of completing his
work, he "hired the services of a smith to make a mark at the water's
edge:--
C. 18. L.
------
18. 7. 34."
-----------
So he brought his journey in Scandinavia to a close, and by the end of
July had reached Kinnordy, where Mrs. Lyell awaited his coming. Then he
set to work to prepare a brief sketch of his investigations for the
approaching meeting of the British Association in Edinburgh, and a more
elaborate paper, to be communicated to the Royal Society in London, in
which he set forth the reasons which had convinced him that in Sweden,
"both on the Baltic and ocean side, part of that country is really
undergoing a gradual and insensibly slow rise." It affects an area
measuring about one thousand miles north and south, and is believed to
reach a maximum at the North Cape. There it is said, but the statement
needs verification, to amount to five feet in a century; at Gefle,
ninety miles north of Stockholm, it cannot be more than two or three
feet in the same time; while at Stockholm itself it can hardly exceed
six inches. Further south, in Scania proper, as at Malmoe, Skanoer,
Trelleborg, and Ystad, the movement is distinctly in an opposite
direction.[78]
This paper was afterwards accepted by the Royal Society as the Bakerian
lecture for the year. But the preparation of this was not Lyell's only
occupation. In October he had begun fossil ichthyology, was attending
lectures in chemistry, and "had made some progress," as he writes to
Mantell, "in a single volume which two years ago I promised Murray, a
purely elementary work for beginners in geology, and which I find more
agreeable work than I had expected." So his hands were pretty full. A
pleasant surprise came in the closing months of the year, namely the
award of one of the Royal Medals by that Society in acknowledgment of
the merits of his "Principles of Geology."
In the earlier part of 1835 Lyell accepted the presidency of the
Geological Society, an office which, it will be remembered, he had
virtually refused a couple of years before, when he was busy with his
great book. With this exception, nothing worthy of record appears to
have happened in the first six months of the year, but in July Mrs.
Lyell and he left England for a journey to France, Germany, and
Switzerland. By that date, as he mentions in a letter to a friend, 1,750
copies of the last edition of the "Principles" had been sold, a demand
that puts him in good heart as to the future of the book, and proves
that his labours on it had not been in vain. But he did not permit
himself to be idle. As a letter written to Sedgwick from Paris shows, he
was still working away at the classification of the Tertiary deposits;
for in this letter he discusses the relation of the coralline and the
red, or shelly Crag of Suffolk. Mr. Charlesworth, subsequently well
known as a collector, had been obtaining a number of fossil shells from
the former deposit, and the character of these suggested that it was
distinctly the older of the two, as is now universally admitted. In
discussing this question Lyell lays down a principle of classification
the soundness of which has been proved by experience, namely, that the
age of a Tertiary deposit is to be determined by the proportion of
recent species and the relation of these to the forms still living in
the neighbouring seas. If, for instance, the recent shells in a
formation, amounting to one-half, or even as few as one-third, of the
total number can be thus found, the formation will be Pliocene in age,
"while the recent shells of the Miocene have a more exotic and tropical
form." To this conclusion he had been led, by an examination, with the
help of Deshayes, of a typical collection of Crag fossils which he had
carried with him to Paris. As to other matters, the leading French
geologists were still warring vigorously in defence of deluges, and none
of his numerous heresies, he remarks, appears "to have excited so much
honest indignation as his recent attempt to convey some of the huge
Scandinavian blocks to their present destination by means of ice." He
had proved, he reminds Sedgwick, that "some of the great blocks near
Upsala must have travelled to their present destination since the Baltic
was a brackish water sea, so that those who maintain that there was one,
and one only, rush of water, which scattered all the blocks of Sweden
and the Alps, must make out this catastrophe to be, as it were, an
affair of yesterday." Geology, even at that date, had advanced far
enough for this admission to have landed the diluvialists in some
awkward dilemmas, to say nothing of the physical difficulties which they
would find in accounting for the existence of waves or currents potent
enough to bowl the _Pierre a bot_ from the aiguilles round the Trient
glacier to the slopes of the Jura, or to fling the erratics of
Scandinavia broadcast over the lowlands around the Baltic. This,
however, was not the only lost cause over which the French geologists
were holding their shield. Lyell goes on to write, with a touch of quiet
sarcasm: "As to the elevation crater business, Von Buch, de Beaumont,
and Dufresnoy are to write and prove that Somma and Etna are elevation
craters, and Von Buch himself has just gone to Auvergne to prove that
Mont Dore is one also."
Lyell's special intention in visiting the Alps was to obtain evidence as
to the relation of the metamorphic and sedimentary rocks. Geologists of
the Wernerian School, with sundry others who hardly went so far as the
Freiberg professor, maintained that the crystalline schists, including
gneiss, had been produced, often as precipitates, in a primaeval ocean,
the waters of which were far too hot to allow of the existence of life.
At a later time, as the temperature fell, the great masses of slightly
altered slates and grits were deposited--the region of "greywacke," the
transitional rocks as they were commonly called. These for the most part
were unfossiliferous, at any rate in their earliest stages. To this
view, of course, the Huttonian dictum, which Lyell sought to establish,
was diametrically opposed, viz. that the earth showed no signs of a
beginning. Now he had been informed that in the Alps certain slaty rocks
contained fossils which indicated an age corresponding generally with
the chalk of England, and that in other parts of that chain even
crystalline schists could be found interbedded with fossiliferous strata
of Secondary age. To settle the former question he intended to visit the
famous quarries of Glarus, but was ultimately compelled to leave this
for another year, as he took the latter point first in order of time,
and the investigation of it involved more work than he had anticipated.
In regard to this, the most important sections were to be found on the
precipitous northern slopes of the Jungfrau and in the upper part of the
Urbach-thal, a lonely glen which descends into the main valley of the
Aar at Imhof, above Meyringen. In both these localities gneiss appears
to overlie "fossiliferous limestone," and Lyell, after visiting them,
returned satisfied that he had seen "alternations of the gneiss with
limestone of the lias or something newer in the highest regions of the
Alps." That undoubtedly he saw, but he did not suspect that the
appearance was illusory. This was not in the least surprising; the Alps
were still almost a terra incognita; the processes of "mountain making"
as yet were unknown; many statements in common currency as to the
passage of sedimentary into crystalline rocks were erroneous and
distinctly misleading. Only by degrees was it discovered that this
superposition of gneiss or crystalline schist to Secondary rock was due
to folding on a scale so gigantic that the older had been doubled over
upon the younger rock and the apparent order of succession was the
converse of the true one. The intercalation also of the gneiss and the
Jurassic limestone was a result of a similar action, but carried, if
possible, to an even greater extreme, for here the hard gneiss had been
thrust in wedge-like slabs between the softer masses of sedimentary
rock, like a paper-knife between the leaves of a book; that is to say,
the gneiss and crystalline schists in both cases were vastly more
ancient than the fossiliferous limestone. It is only of late years that
this startling fact has been established beyond question; and even now
there are many geologists who do not appear to recognise how seriously
the Huttonian _dictum_ "there is no sign of a beginning" has been shaken
by the collapse of this evidence. At the present time the question is in
this position; all the attempts to prove crystalline schists to be of
the same age as, or younger than, fossiliferous sedimentary rocks either
have been complete failures or have proved to be very dubious, while in
many cases these schists are demonstrably earlier than the oldest rocks
of the district to which a date can be assigned. Hence, though possibly
it may turn out that the disciples of Hutton were right, and that, as
Lyell thought, a metamorphic rock may be of almost any geological age,
his hypothesis not only is unproved, but also the evidence which has
been brought forward in its favour has turned out after a strict
scrutiny to be exceedingly dubious, if not absolutely contrary. In
regard to this question we may feel a little surprise that one
difficulty did not occur to Lyell's sceptical mind, namely: what could
be the nature and cause of a process of metamorphism which could convert
one sediment into a crystalline schist--changed practically past
recognition--and leave its neighbour so far unaltered that its
characteristic fossils could be readily recognised?
But though he was unable to investigate the question of Secondary or
perhaps early Tertiary fossils in the "transition"-like rock of Glarus,
his study of the sedimentary deposits of the Bernese Oberland, which had
formed a necessary preliminary to the other inquiry, raised some
difficulties in his mind as to the origin of slaty cleavage. At a
meeting of the Geological Society in the month of March, Professor
Sedgwick had read his classic paper[79] on this subject, in which he
established the independence of cleavage and bedding. This paper laid
the foundation for the discovery of the true cause of the former
structure, though its author was unable, with the information then at
his command, to do more than suggest an hypothesis, which afterwards
proved to be incorrect. He had shown that both the strike and the dip of
cleavage-planes were persistent over large areas, and that while the one
might gradually change its direction and the other its angle of
inclination, if they were followed far enough, yet this angle usually
remained unaltered for considerable distances, and appeared to be quite
unaffected by any variation in the slope of the strata. From these
observations it followed that the planes of cleavage ought not to be
coincident with those of bedding. Lyell, however, writes to tell
Sedgwick[80]:--
"I found the cleavage or slaty structure of fine drawing
slate in the great quarry of the Niesen, on the east [south]
side of the Lake of Thun, quite coincided with the dip of
the strata ascertained by alternate beds of greywacke.... As
it is the best description of drawing slate, and as
divisible almost as mica into thin plates, I cannot make out
how to distinguish such a structure from any which can be
called slaty, and such an attempt would, I fear, involve the
subject in great confusion."
The observation was perfectly correct, and many like instances could be
found in the Alps; nevertheless, Sedgwick was right in his
generalisation, and the two structures are perfectly independent, though
the difficulty raised by Lyell did not disappear till the true cause of
slaty cleavage was recognised--viz. that it is a result of pressure.
Thus, in a region like the Alps, where the strata often have been so
completely folded as to be bent, so to say, back to back, the planes of
cleavage, which are produced when the rocks can no longer yield to the
pressure by bending, necessarily coincide with those of bedding. Still,
even in these cases, if careful search be made in the vicinity, some
minor flexure generally betrays the secret, and exhibits the cleavage
structure cutting across that of bedding.
The next year, 1836, flowed on, like the last, quietly and uneventfully;
a fifth edition of the "Principles" was passing through the press; the
"Elements of Geology" was making progress, though slowly; and Lyell's
duties as President of the Geological Society, which involved the
delivery of an address in the month of February and the preparation of
another one for the same season in the following year, occupied a good
deal of his time. The summer was spent in a long visit to his parents at
Kinnordy, after which he and Mrs. Lyell made some stay in the Isle of
Arran before they returned to London. The latter seemingly had been
rather out of health, and this may have been the reason why a longer
journey was not undertaken, but she must have found the Scotch air a
complete restorative, for after her return to London in the autumn Lyell
writes to his father that "everyone is much struck with the improvement
in Mary's health and appearance."
But one letter, of the few which have been preserved from those written
in 1836, possesses a special interest, for it expresses his ideas, at
this epoch, in regard to the question of the origin of species, and
indicates his freedom from prejudice and the openness of his mind. It is
addressed to Sir John Herschel, then engaged in his memorable
investigations at the Cape of Good Hope, who had favoured him with some
valuable comments and criticisms on the Principles of Geology, and in
the course of these had corrected a mistake which Lyell had made in
regard to a rather difficult physical question. In referring to this,
the latter remarks that the clearness of the mathematical reasoning (to
quote his words) "made me regret that I had not given some of the years
which I devoted to Greek plays and Aristotle at Oxford, and afterwards
to law and other desultory pursuits, to mathematics." Doubtless there is
hardly any better foundation for geology than a course of mathematics;
at the same time, classical studies did much to give Lyell his lucidity
and elegance of style, and thus to ensure the success of the "Principles
of Geology."
It will be best to give Lyell's own words, for the document forms an
appendix or lengthy postscript. As is incidentally mentioned, it was not
in his own handwriting,[81] and thus probably was drawn up with rather
more than usual care.
"In regard to the origination of new species, I am very glad
to find that you think it probable 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.... When I first came to the
notion--which I never saw expressed elsewhere, though I have
no doubt it had all been thought out before--of a succession
of extinction of species, and creation of new ones, going on
perpetually now, and through an indefinite period of the
past, and to continue for ages to come, all in accommodation
to the changes which must continue in the inanimate and
habitable earth, the idea struck me as the grandest which I
had ever conceived, so far as regards the attributes of the
Presiding Mind. For one can in imagination summon before us
a small part[82] at least of the circumstances which must be
contemplated and foreknown, before it can be decided what
powers and qualities a new species must have in order to
enable it to endure for a given time, and to play its part
in due relation to all other beings destined to coexist with
it, before it dies out. It might be necessary, perhaps, to
be able to know the number by which each species would be
represented in a given region 10,000 years hence, as much as
for Babbage to find what would be the place of every wheel
in his new calculating machine at each movement.
"It may be seen that unless some slight additional
precaution be taken, the species about to be born would at a
certain era be reduced to too low a number. There may be a
thousand modes of ensuring its duration beyond that time;
one, for example, may be the rendering it more prolific, but
this would perhaps make it press too hard upon other species
at other times. Now, if it be an insect it may be made in
one of its transformations to resemble a dead stick, or a
lichen, or a stone, so as to be less easily found by its
enemies; or if this would make it too strong, an occasional
variety of the species may have this advantage conferred
upon it; or if this would be still too much, one sex of a
certain variety. Probably there is scarcely a dash of colour
on the wing or body, of which the choice would be quite
arbitrary, or what might not affect its duration for
thousands of years. I have been told that the leaf-like
expansions of the abdomen and thighs of a certain Brazilian
Mantis turn from green to yellow as autumn advances,
together with the leaves of the plants among which it seeks
for its prey. Now if species come in in succession, such
contrivances must sometimes be made, and such relations
predetermined between species, as the Mantis for example,
and plants not then existing, but which it was foreseen
would exist together with some particular climate at a given
time. But I cannot do justice to this train of speculation
in a letter, and will only say that it seems to me to offer
a more beautiful subject for reasoning and reflecting on,
than the notion of great batches of species all coming in,
and afterwards going out at once."
Early in October Charles Darwin, for whose return from his noted voyage
on the _Beagle_ Lyell had more than once expressed an earnest desire,
arrived in England, bringing with him a large collection of specimens
and almost innumerable facts, geological and biological, the fruits of
his travels. The biological observations slowly ripened in Darwin's mind
till they had for their final result the "Origin of Species." The
geological stirred Lyell to immediate enthusiasm, for they afforded a
valuable support to some of the ideas which he had put forward to the
"Principles." "The idea of the Pampas going up," he writes to Darwin,
"at the rate of an inch a century, while the Western Coast and Andes
rise many feet and unequally, has long been a dream of mine. What a
splendid field you have to write upon!" The enthusiasm evidently was not
confined to words, for Darwin himself says in writing to Professor
Henslow, "Mr. Lyell has entered in the most good-natured manner, and
almost without being asked, into all my plans."[83] The letter to
Darwin,[84] which is quoted above, also contains a characteristic piece
of advice.
"Don't accept any official scientific place if you can avoid
it, and tell no one I gave you this advice, as they would
all cry out against me as the preacher of anti-patriotic
principles. I fought against the calamity of being President
[of the Geological Society] as long as I could. All has gone
on smoothly, and it has not cost me more time than I
anticipated; but my question is, whether the time
annihilated by learned bodies ('par les affaires
administratives') is balanced by any good they do. Fancy
exchanging Herschel at the Cape for Herschel as President of
the Royal Society, which he so narrowly escaped being, and I
voting for him too! I hope to be forgiven for that. At
least, work as I did, exclusively for yourself and for
Science for many years, and do not prematurely incur the
honour or the penalty of official dignities. There are
people who may be profitably employed in such duties,
because they would not work if not so engaged."
Not very altruistic advice, it may be feared, but nevertheless bearing
the stamp of practical wisdom. Committee-work and other official duties
are terrible wasters of time, and thus, although often necessary and
inevitable, are rightly regarded as evils. Many men, as Lyell intimates,
have been seriously hindered in researches for which they were
exceptionally fitted by allowing themselves to be at everyone's beck and
call, and getting their days cut to shreds by meetings. So far has this
gone in some cases, that the high promise of early days has been very
inadequately fulfilled, and some great piece of work has been never
completed. If the spirit in which Lyell writes were more frequent, the
common illusion that workers in science belong to some inferior branch
of the public service would be dispelled, and the business of scientific
societies would sometimes run more smoothly; at any rate, it would be
finished more quickly, because no one would care to waste time over
splitting hairs, and hunting for knots in a bullrush.[85]
The year 1837, like the preceding one, was spent in quiet work, though
three months of the summer were devoted to a journey on the Continent.
As regards the former, it is evident that the book on which he was
engaged had caused him more than ordinary difficulty, for it appears to
have progressed more slowly than can be explained either by the duties
of the Presidential chair, which he resigned in the month of February of
this year, or by any distraction caused by other scientific work. But a
sentence in a letter written to one of his sisters at the beginning of
May throws some light on the cause of the delay. He says, "I have at
last struck out a plan for the future splitting of the 'Principles' into
'Principles' and 'Elements' as two separate works, which pleases me very
much, so now I shall get on rapidly."
The summer journey was to Denmark and the south of Norway, and this time
Mrs. Lyell was able to bear him company. They left London early in June
for Hamburg, crossing Holstein to Kiel, and travelling thence to
Copenhagen. Here he set to work at once with Dr. Beck to study fossil
shells, in the Crown Prince's cabinet and in the other museums of the
city. Questions had arisen as to the nomenclature of various fossil
species to which Lyell had referred in his book, on which Dr. Beck
differed from Deshayes, so that Lyell was anxious to investigate some of
the points for himself, and to see the original type-specimens in
Linnaeus' collection, since these, in some cases, had been wrongly
identified by Lamarck and other palaeontologists. During a drive with
the Crown Prince, he had the opportunity of examining an interesting
section of the drift a few miles from Copenhagen, where it "was composed
to a great depth of innumerable rolled blocks of chalk with a few of
granite intermixed. Fossils were numerous in the chalk.... Prince
Christian set four men to work, while the horses were baiting, to clear
away the talus, by which I saw that the boulders of chalk were in fact
in beds, with occasional layers of sand between."
On reaching Norway Lyell made several expeditions from Christiania, in
the course of which he examined a clay which occupies valleys and other
parts of the granite region. This, which sometimes is found more than
600 feet above sea-level, he states "is a marine deposit containing
recent species of shells, such as now inhabit the fjords of Norway."
This visit to Norway gave Lyell the opportunity of dispelling some
erroneous ideas as to the relation of the granite to the "transition"
(or lower Palaeozoic) strata. This granite he found to be intrusive into
these rocks, and into the much more ancient gneiss on which they rested.
The sedimentary rocks near the junction were much altered, the
limestones being changed into marble, the shale into micaceous schists;
the fossils being more completely obliterated in the latter than in the
former case. Some remarks which he makes as to the relations of the
granite and gneiss indicate the closeness and carefulness of his
observations. "This gneiss ... this most ancient rock is so beautifully
soldered on to the granite, so nicely threaded by veins large and small,
or in other cases so shades into the granite, that had you not known the
immense difference in age, you would be half-staggered with the
suspicion that all was made at one batch."[86]
From Copenhagen, on their return, they went to Luebeck and drove thence
to Hamburg, across the sand and boulder formation of the Baltic, and so
through the north of Germany. Among these boulders Lyell recognised the
red granite, which he had seen in Norway sending off veins into the
orthoceratite limestones and associated Silurian rocks. This "had been
carried, with small gravel of the same, by ice of course, over the south
of Norway, and thence down the south-west of Sweden, and all over
Jutland and Holstein down to the Elbe, from whence they come to the
Weser, and so to this or near this (Wesel-on-the-Rhine). But it is
curious that about Muenster and Osnabruck, the low Secondary mountains
have stopped them; hills of chalk, Muschelkalk, old coal, etc., which
rise a few hundred feet in general above the great plain of north and
north-west Germany, effectually arrest their passage. This then was
already dry land when Holstein, and all the Baltic as far as Osnabruck
or the Teutoberger Waldhills, was submerged."[87]
At the end of September they returned to London through Paris and
Normandy, and the rest of the year was mainly devoted to the completion
of the "Elements of Geology." Little seems to have happened in the
earlier part of the next year (1838); and in the summer Lyell went
northward, halting on the way, at Newcastle-on-Tyne, to attend the
meeting of the British Association. Here he was made President of the
Geological Section, which appears to have been very successful, for he
writes that the section was crowded--from 1,000 to 1,500 persons always
present. The meeting, altogether, was a large one; but as the total
number of tickets issued only amounted to 2,400, it seems probable that
the general public was admitted more freely than is the custom at the
present day. Sedgwick also on one occasion attracted a large crowd, for
we are told that he delivered a most eloquent lecture "to 3,000 people
on the Sea-shore." Geology, no doubt, has made great advances since that
day, little more than half a century ago, but at the cost of much loss
of attractiveness. It was then simple in its terminology, and fairly
intelligible to people of ordinary education; now these are frightened
away by papers bristling with technical terms and Greek-born words, and
nothing but the prospect of a "scrimmage" would draw together 500 people
to a meeting of Section C at the present day. Commonly the audience
hardly amounts to one-fifth of that number. Geologists, perhaps, might
consider with advantage whether a little abstinence from long words
might not make the science more generally intelligible, and thus more
attractive, without any loss of real precision.
The "Elements of Geology" was finally published a few weeks before the
Newcastle meeting, and the work of recasting the "Principles" went on at
intervals in preparation for the sixth edition, which appeared in 1840.
If, in accordance with the maxim, a nation is happy which has no
history, Lyell ought to have passed almost a year in a state of
felicity, for nothing is recorded between September 6th, 1838, when he
writes to Charles Darwin from Kinnordy, and August 1st, 1839, when he
writes to Dr. Fitton from the same place. Both these letters are
interesting. The former discusses the relation of Darwin's theory of the
formation of coral islands with E. de Beaumont's idea of the
contemporaneity of parallel mountain chains, which has been already
mentioned. One passage also throws light upon the difficulties with
which the British Association in its earlier days had to contend. Some
of the most influential newspapers had set themselves to write it
down--needless to say, without success. Good sense sometimes is too
strong even for newspapers. But Lyell thus urges Darwin[88]:--
"Do not let Broderip, or the _Times_ or the _Age_ or _John
Bull_, nor any papers, whether of saints or sinners, induce
you to join in running down the British Association. I do
not mean to insinuate that you ever did so, but I have
myself often seen its faults in a strong light, and am aware
of what may be urged against philosophers turning public
orators, etc. But I am convinced--although it is not the way
I love to spend my own time--that in this country no
importance is attached to any body of men who do not make
occasional demonstrations of their strength in public
meetings. It is a country where, as Tom Moore justly
complained, a most exaggerated importance is attached to the
faculty of thinking on your legs, and where, as Dan
O'Connell very well knows, nothing is to be got in the way
of homage or influence, or even a fair share of power,
without agitation."
Far-reaching words, the truth of which has been demonstrated again and
again during the years which have elapsed since they were written. Lyell
lays his finger on the weakest spot in the nature of the true-born
Briton: he is deaf to quiet reasoning, and frightened by loud shoutings.
The second letter, that of 1839, is addressed to Dr. Fitton, who had
written for the _Edinburgh Review_ a criticism of the "Principles of
Geology," in which he had expressed the opinion that Lyell had
insufficiently acknowledged the value of Hutton's work. From this charge
Lyell defends himself, pointing out that, valuable as were Hutton's
contributions to the philosophy of geology, he was by no means the first
in the field--that there were also "mighty men of old" to whom he felt
bound to do justice, even at the risk of seeming to undervalue the great
Scotchman. He points out that Hutton's work occupies a fair amount of
space in the section of the "Principles" which is devoted to an
historical sketch of the earlier geologists:--
"In my first chapter," he writes, "I gave Hutton credit for
first separating geology from other sciences, and declaring
it to have no concern with the origin of things;[89] and
after rapidly discussing a great number of celebrated
writers, I pause to give, comparatively speaking,
full-length portraits of Werner and Hutton, giving the
latter the decided palm of theoretical excellence, and
alluding to the two grand points in which he advanced the
science--first, the igneous origin of granite; secondly,
that the so-called primitive rocks were altered strata.[90]
I dwelt emphatically on the complete revolution brought
about by his new views respecting granite, and entered fully
on Playfair's illustrations and defence of Hutton.... The
mottoes of my first two volumes were especially selected
from Playfair's 'Huttonian Theory' because--although I was
brought round slowly, against some of my early prejudices,
to adopt Playfair's doctrines to the full extent--I was
desirous to acknowledge his and Hutton's priority. And I
have a letter of Basil Hall's, in which, after speaking of
points in which Hutton approached nearer to my doctrines
than his father, Sir James Hall, he comments on the manner
in which my very title-page did homage to the Huttonians,
and complimented me for thus disavowing all pretensions to
be the originator of the theory of the adequacy of modern
causes."[91]
In the following month Lyell attended a meeting of the British
Association at Birmingham, and was invited, together with several of the
leading men of science there present, to dine and spend the night at
Drayton Manor, the residence of Sir R. Peel, near Tamworth. In a letter
to one of his sisters, Lyell gives an interesting sketch of his
impressions of the great statesman:--
"Some of the party said next day that Peel never gave an
opinion for or against any point from extra-caution, but I
really thought that he expressed himself as freely, even on
subjects bordering on the political, as a well-bred man
could do when talking to another with whose opinions he was
unacquainted. He was very curious to know what Vernon
Harcourt [the President for that year] had said on the
connection of religion and science. I told him of it, and my
own ideas, and in the middle of my strictures on the Dean of
York's pamphlet[92] I exclaimed, 'By-the-bye, I have only
just remembered that he is your brother-in-law.' He said,
'Yes, he is a clever man and a good writer, but if men will
not read any one book written by scientific men on such a
subject, they must take the consequences.' ... If I had not
known Sir Robert's extensive acquirements, I should only
have thought him an intelligent, well-informed country
gentleman; not slow, but without any quickness, free from
that kind of party feeling which prevents men from
appreciating those who differ from them, taking pleasure in
improvements, without enthusiasm, not capable of joining in
a hearty laugh at a good joke, but cheerful, and not
preventing Lord Northampton, Whewell, and others from making
merry. He is without a tincture of science, and interested
in it only so far as knowing its importance in the arts, and
as a subject with which a large body of persons of talent
are occupied."[93]
The next year (1840) appears to have slipped away uneventfully, for only
a single letter serves as a record for the twelvemonth, and that is but
a short one addressed to Babbage asking him to look up one or two
geological matters during a journey through Normandy to Paris. As it is
dated from London on the 11th of August, this looks as if Lyell did not
go during the summer farther than Scotland, where he presided over the
Geological Section at the meeting of the British Association.[94] The
earlier part of 1841 appears to have been equally uneventful; but the
summer of that year saw the beginning of a long journey and the opening
of a new geological horizon, for Mr. and Mrs. Lyell crossed the Atlantic
on a visit to Canada and the United States.
FOOTNOTES:
[66] At King's College and at the Royal Institution. _See_ pp. 71, 72.
[67] Life, Letters, and Journals, vol. i. p. 401.
[68] Huxley, "Man's Place in Nature," p. 121.
[69] Only the skull was found, and that imperfect; moreover, the missing
part could not be discovered. The same is true of the other animal
remains, so that they could hardly have been victims of the Deluge.
[70] "Man's Place in Nature," p. 156.
[71] _Turbo littoreus_, _Mytilus edulis_, _Cardium edule_.
[72] The term, of course, is used here in the sense of either a slaty
rock or a hard shale.
[73] The ruins of which (in the Bay of Baiae) gradually sank after the
middle of the fifth century until (probably towards the end of the
fifteenth century) the floor was more than twenty feet under water.
Since then it has risen up again.--"Principles of Geology," chap. xxx.
[74] He had expressed his doubts, in this and the former editions, as to
the validity of the proofs of a gradual rise of land in Sweden.
[75] Life, Letters, and Journals, vol. i. p. 436.
[76] Lyell's specimens appear to have come from Kured, two miles north
of Uddevalla, and only one hundred feet above the sea, but barnacles
were obtained by Brongniart at two hundred feet.--"Principles of
Geology," chap. xxxi.
[77] "Antiquity of Man," chap. iii.
[78] "Principles of Geology," ch. xxxi. "Antiquity of Man," ch. iii.
[79] "On the Structure of Large Mineral Masses," etc. _Trans. Geol. Soc.
Lond._, iii. p. 461.
[80] Life, Letters, and Journals, vol. i. p. 460.
[81] The weakness of his eyes was always more or less of a trouble.
[82] It is "past" in the text (Life, Letters, and Journals, vol. i. p.
468), but I think this an obvious misprint.
[83] "Life of Charles Darwin," vol. i. p. 273.
[84] Life, Letters, and Journals, vol. i. p. 475.
[85] It is but rarely that, so far as the writer has seen, this remark
applies to the committees of scientific societies in London, but the
amount of time thus wasted in the universities, judging from his own
experience of one of them, is really melancholy.
[86] Life, Letters, and Journals, vol. ii. p. 22.
[87] _Ibid._, vol. ii. p. 20.
[88] Life, Letters, and Journals, vol. ii. p. 45.
[89] Though undoubtedly this severance of geology and cosmogony was very
helpful at the time to the progress of the former, the justice of it may
be questioned; and Lyell's approval would not be endorsed by every
geologist at the present day, though probably it would still commend
itself to the majority.
[90] While this is true of many of the so-called primitive rocks, it is
now generally believed that no inconsiderable portion are really
abnormal or modified igneous rocks.
[91] Life, Letters, and Journals, vol. ii. p. 48.
[92] The Very Reverend W. Cockburn, D.D., who testified against the
Association in a pamphlet entitled "The Dangers of Peripatetic
Philosophy" (published in 1838). When the Association met at York in
1844, he read a paper before the Geological Section, criticising that
science, and propounding a cosmogonical theory of his own. He was
severely handled by Professor Sedgwick, but published his paper under
the title, "The Bible defended against the British Association." This,
though an exceptionally silly production, had a large sale. ("Life and
Letters of Sedgwick," vol. ii. p. 76.)
[93] Life, Letters, and Journals, vol. ii. p. 51.
[94] Held at Glasgow, beginning September 17th. An allusion, however,
during his American journey seems to imply a visit to France this year.