Charles Lyell and Modern Geology

by T. G. Bonney

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 Linnæus' collection, since these, in some cases, had been wrongly identified by Lamarck and other palæontologists. 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 Palæozoic) 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 Lübeck 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 Münster 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.