[70] Description of some New Species and Genera of Reptiles from Western Australia, discovered by John Gould, Esq., Annals and Magazine of Natural History, vol. vii. p. 88, 1841.
[71] “We shall, I think, eventually more fully recognise that, as is the case with the periods of the day, each of the larger geological divisions follows the other, without any actual break or boundary; and that the minor subdivisions are like the hours on the clock, useful and conventional rather than absolutely fixed by any general cause in Nature.”—Annual Address, President of Geological Society, 1875.
“With regard to stratigraphical geology, the main foundations are already laid, and a great part of the details filled in. The tendency of modern discoveries has already been, and will probably still be, to fill up those breaks, which, according to the view of many, though by no means all geologists, are so frequently assumed to exist between different geological periods and to bring about a more full recognition of the continuity of geological time. As knowledge increases, it will, I think, become more and more apparent that all existing divisions of time are to a considerable extent local and arbitrary. But, even when this is fully recognised, it will still be found desirable to retain them, if only for the sake of convenience and approximate precision.”—Annual Address, President of Geological Society, 1876.
[72] “It was not until January 1832, that the second volume of the Principles was published, when it was received with as much favour as the first had been. It related more especially to the changes in the organic world, while the former volume had treated mainly of the inorganic forces of nature. Singularly enough, some of the points which were seized on by his great fellow-labourer Murchison for his presidential address to this Society in 1832, as subjects for felicitation, are precisely those which the candid mind of Lyell, ever ready to attach the full value to discoveries or arguments from time to time brought forward, even when in opposition to his own views, ultimately found reason to modify. We can never, I think, more highly appreciate Sir Charles Lyell’s freshness of mind, his candour and love of truth, than when we compare certain portions of the first edition of the Principles with those which occupy the same place in the last, and trace the manner in which his judicial intellect was eventually led to conclusions diametrically opposed to those which he originally held. To those acquainted only with the latest editions of the Principles, and with his Antiquity of Man, it may sound almost ironical in Murchison to have written, ‘I cannot avoid noticing the clear and impartial manner in which the untenable parts of the dogmas concerning the alteration and transmutation of species and genera are refuted, and how satisfactorily the author confirms the great truth of the recent appearance of man upon our planet.’
“By the work (Principles of Geology, vol. iii.), as a whole, was dealt the most telling blow that had ever fallen upon those to whom it appears ‘more philosophical to speculate on the possibilities of the past than patiently to explore the realities of the present,’ while the earnest and careful endeavour to reconcile the former indications of change with the evidence of gradual mutation now in progress, or which may be in progress, received its greatest encouragement. The doctrines which Hutton and Playfair had held and taught assumed new and more vigorous life as better principles were explained by their eminent successor, and were supported by arguments which, as a whole, were incontrovertible.”—Annual Address, President of Geological Society, 1876.
“But, as Sir Roderick Murchison has long ago proved, there are parts of the record which are singularly complete, and in those parts we have the proof of creation without any indication of development. The Silurian rocks, as regards oceanic life, are perfect and abundant in the forms they have preserved. Yet there are no fish. The Devonian age followed tranquilly and without a break, and in the Devonian sea, suddenly, fish appear, appear in shoals, and in form of the highest and most perfect type.”—The Duke of Argyll, Primeval Man, p. 45, London, 1869.
[73] T. Mellard Reade, “Limestone as an Index of Geological Time,” Proceedings, Royal Society, London, vol. xxviii., p. 281.
[74] Scientific American, Supplement, February 1881.
[75] Proceedings, Royal Society, vol. xv. No. 82, 1866.
[76] Athenæum, August 25, 1860, &c.