Heroes of science

by P. Martin Duncan

Young Lyell studied butterflies, and chased them in the fields and woodlands of the New Forest in Hampshire. He soon began to study the changes of form which insects undergo in their short lives, and to watch, hour after hour, the habits of the water-beetles and other aquatic insects. After spoiling a considerable number of hats in chasing butterflies, Lyell was supplied with a net and a cabinet in which to place his stores of insect wealth. Oddly enough, some of the varieties of the butterflies which young Lyell collected were of use in after years to Curtis the entomologist. The boy had no companions in these “un-English” amusements, and was very grateful for the assistance of his father’s head servant, who knew a few plants by sight, and helped his young master. “Instead of sympathy,” wrote Lyell, “I received from almost every one beyond my home, either ridicule, or hints that the pursuits of other boys were more manly. Whether did I fancy that insects had no feeling? What could be the use of them? The contemptuous appellation of ‘butterfly hunting’ applied to my favourite employment always nettled me.” However, Lyell persisted, and when he got back to school he used to work at his favourite subject out of school hours.

Finding a number of expensive books in his father’s library on entomology, with beautiful plates in them, the boy’s common sense told him that somebody prized all this knowledge, and that it must be valuable. Oddly enough, he took to reading Linnæus for descriptions of insects, and hunted up pictures of his captured butterflies in the plates of the more modern authors. Recovered in health, and fairly strong, Lyell was sent at thirteen years of age to school at Dr. Bayley’s, preparatory to being sent to the great school at Winchester. The new school was at Midhurst, in Sussex, and it had all the demerits of the schools of the day, fighting, fagging, and bullying being rampant. Lyell came off well, although a weak and short-sighted boy. Nevertheless, he stated that the method of teaching got rid of “most of my natural antipathy to work and extreme absence of mind, and I acquired habits of attention, which were, however, painful to me, and only sustained when I had an object in view.”

It is evident that at this time, 1811-1813, Lyell’s heart was not altogether in his classics and mathematics, and that he was reading other subjects which were more pleasing to him. At the early age of seventeen, Lyell entered Exeter College, Oxford, and whilst working fairly well at his studies, cultivated music, and entered thoroughly into all the politics and literary fellowships of the undergraduates. His love of nature persisted, and he began to direct his thoughts to the past, and to learn something about fossils. Thus he found out the house of Sowerby, the conchologist, by finding at the door an ammonite, well known to Oxford geologists. Subsequently, when on a visit to Mr. Dawson Turner, of Norwich, he met a Javanese traveller, Dr. Arnold. Mr. Dawson Turner had a fine collection of Norwich and Suffolk fossils. Lyell writes to his father to say, “I have copied for Buckland, part of his paper, being a list of those which are described, and shall copy the rest.” It appears that the seed was sown by attending a course of lectures on geology, at Oxford, given by the celebrated Dr. Buckland, and it is no little thing for that great university to be able to assert that its teaching developed the greatest system of geology ever brought forward. Lyell geologized over Norfolk, and in his conversations with his host and Dr. Arnold, it appeared that he had got hold of the idea, the elaboration of which is at the very bottom of his future great work. Lyell studied what is now in progress in nature so as to comprehend what occurred in the past times of the earth. Modern changes are the examples by which ancient changes can alone be studied. He quotes in a letter to his father, the following saying of Buckland and of White: “Local information, from actual observation, tends more to promote natural history science, than all that is done by the speculations and compilations of voluminous authors.” Dr. Arnold made collections of Norfolk fossils, and catalogued them, whilst his young friend endeavoured to make a geological map of the county. In the vacation Lyell and two friends went to Staffa, and his description of the grand columns of the old volcanic stone shows how he enjoyed and comprehended the scene.

In 1818 the family of the Lyells made a tour in France, Switzerland, and Italy, and the notes, letters, and diaries of the eldest son have been preserved, and they show how gradually, yet surely, he was educating himself for that path which he, subsequently, never deserted. France was not very lively, but he noticed the country more than the people, and observed the country changed with the soil. He spent his first Sunday at Paris, and went to the Jardin des Plantes the first thing on Monday morning, but was disappointed by not hearing Cuvier lecture. In the evening he went to see the great fountains at Versailles, where Wellington was dining with some French marshals. Day after day the wonderful sights of Paris were visited; but Lyell, whenever he had the opportunity, slipped off to the Jardin des Plantes. He was much struck with the collection of comparative anatomy, which he said might tempt anyone who had the opportunity of staying in Paris, to take up ardently the study of anatomy. He studied Cuvier’s work on fossil remains, and on the geology of the country round Paris. One of his visits was to Cuvier’s lecture room, which he described as filled with fossil remains, among which are those glorious relics of a former world. Leaving Paris, Lyell travelled by post, and noticed the geology and rocks of the monotonous country to the Jura Mountains. He was mightily puzzled about the rocks of the Jura, and enjoyed that magnificent scene of the Alps from the top of the hills over which he was travelling. He wrote, “In descending the Jura from Lavatey to Gex, we had a most magnificent view of a vast extent of country. Below us the Lake of Geneva and the Canton de Vaud; before us the Savoy Alps towering up to the clouds, and in spite of their great distance and the height on which we stood, extended in a long line before us like an army of giants, Mont Blanc rising high above all in the middle as their chief. We saw the Dent du Midi to our left, shooting up his two remarkable peaks, with many more of extraordinary and picturesque forms.” On visiting the Valley of Chamouni, we find Lyell naming the rocks of the different well known scenes, according to the accepted terms of the mineralogists of the day, and this is a satisfactory proof that he had been studying geology very effectually, by himself, before he left England. He saw his first glacier, of any importance, and was immensely struck with the changes it was producing in the valley.

Many books have been written about Mont Blanc, its botany and its glaciers, but none have ever equalled, in truthfulness and freshness of description, the diary of Lyell. He seized upon all the remarkable points to be noticed, and shone both as a botanist and geologist. He, moreover, did not forget his old entomological tastes, for he chased butterflies in the valley of the Arve, and was delighted with the Alpine rhododendrons, and the little ranunculus glacialis. On the Grimsel Lyell saw “some extraordinary large bare pieces of granite-rock, which I could not account for,” and was puzzled by the redness of the snow in some places. Afterwards on the Wengern Alp, he saw a fine avalanche fall over a precipice on to a ledge below. He went to the Valais to see the result of the great flood the previous June, and witnessed the results of the enormous force of running water, carrying with it sand and stone, on everything against which it came in contact.

Lyell then crossed the Alps and visited the Italian lakes and the principal towns of Italy, but more as an antiquarian than a geologist.

The long journey bore fruit, for the constant proofs of changes ever progressing in nature, which were brought before Lyell’s notice, influenced his mind in a very decided manner. He became opposed to the convulsionist doctrines of sudden and violent changes having occurred, and furthered the ideas taught by Hutton, that the alterations on the surface of the earth are slow and constant, and have been uniform for ages. In 1819 Lyell took his B.A. degree at Oxford, obtaining a second class in classical honours, and in the same year he became a fellow of the Geological Society of London, and of the Linnæan Society. On leaving Oxford he was entered at Lincoln’s Inn, and resided in London, and studied law in a special pleader’s office. His eyes became weak, and he was advised to give up reading for a time, and to join his father in a visit to Rome in 1820. In 1822 Lyell was in full correspondence with the most prominent geologists of the day, and he was doing original work, for his letters show that he was interesting himself about the fresh water strata of the Isle of Wight, and about the bones found in Kirkdale cave, of hyæna, elephant, rhinoceros, etc. His enthusiasm and ability to work were recognized in the very remarkable selection the Geological Society made in 1823. For he was then elected one of the secretaries, and his friends were Mantell and Buckland. The same year he went to Paris to see the French geologists and Cuvier. Cuvier was very polite, and introduced Lyell to Madlle. Duvancel, his step-daughter, and Lyell spoke very well of her ability and engaging manners. He met Humboldt and Laplace and Arago, the mathematicians and astronomers of the day.

In 1824 Lyell was interesting himself about Dean Coneabeare’s discovery of a plesiosaurus at Lyme Regis, and the fossil was brought in triumph to the rooms of the Geological Society, then established at 20, Bedford Street. Then he started on a geological excursion in the west of England with M. Prévost, and subsequently went to his birthplace and geologized in Scotland.

Lyell was called to the bar in 1825, and went the western circuit for two years, and in 1826 he became a fellow of the Royal Society, and in 1827 he wrote an article in the Quarterly Review, showing how thoroughly he identified himself with the school of geology that taught the necessity of studying the past from the modern example of slow and gradual changes on the earth by forces which have always been in existence. In 1828 appeared his papers on the excavation of valleys by ordinary agencies, such as the sun’s heat, frost, rain, running water and the atmosphere.

A very remarkable book on the Geology of Central France, with especial reference to the extinct volcanoes and lava flows of the Auvergne, was written by Mr. Scrope, and its criticism was the foundation of the article in the Quarterly Review just noticed. Lyell was so impressed with the grand descriptions in the book, that he determined to persuade Mr. and Mrs. Murchison to accompany him on a tour into the region. Two of Lyell’s letters to his father are so characteristic that they may well find a place here.