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 'Reliquiæ Diluvianæ'[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.