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served freshwater fossils. The lakes in Scotland had only
recently been drained, and they were clearly modern, geologi-
cally speaking. Cuvier had argued that the Paris freshwater lime-
stones were formed only in the deep past, and could not occur
in the modern age. Lyell had just found that Cuvier was wrong
a previously supposed ancient process had occurred recently.
THE HUTTONI AN REVOLUTI ON 185
After he had finished his work in Kinnordy and was on his
way back to London, Lyell paid his visit to James Hall. Since
first visiting with Mantell three years earlier, Lyell s belief in
Buckland s synthesis of Werner and Cuvier had been shaken.
Now he had met the last of the great Huttonians and seen the
one-of-a-kind unconformity at Siccar Point. It is not known
when Lyell first read Playfair s Illustrations, but now he cer-
tainly picked up the book again.
After the 1824 excursion to Scotland, Lyell returned to Lon-
don, and remained there for an extended period. Over the next
few years he did a great deal of writing, and his articles started to
reflect his changing views. In 1826, Lyell published an important
series of articles that focused on his work in southern England
and Scotland. In the last of the three he stated, after discussing
evidence from Chile that an earthquake had caused the land to
rise significantly above sea level: No one can reflect on the above
statement without being tempted to inquire whether the causes
now in action are, as Dr. Buckland has supposed, the last expir-
ing efforts of those mighty disturbing forces which once oper-
ated, or whether as Hutton thought, they would still be sufficient
in a long succession of ages to reproduce analogous results.
The stage was now set for the complete transformation of
Lyell from a Cuvier skeptic to a Huttonian convert. Lyell would
at last be won over after learning firsthand about the power of
volcanoes, a phenomenon that Hutton had avoided because of
the Wernerians preemptive claims that they were strictly shal-
low surface events (that is, coal or some other volatile mineral
186 THE MAN WHO FOUND TI ME
just under the surface of the earth was somehow ignited). In
1827, Lyell asked the editor of the Quarterly Review to let him
review a new book by his friend George Scrope, titled Memoir
on the Geology of Central France. He was drawn to it because
Scrope focused on an area in south-central France that was
known for its unusual geologic formations, such as cone-shaped
hills and deep gorges cut by rivers. In his book, Scrope
described a region that had experienced wave after wave of past
volcanic activity. The formations could not be classified as either
pre-Deluge or post-Deluge, as catastrophists would wish to do.
The well-exposed outcrops, revealed by deeply cutting, fast-
flowing rivers, showed a regular pattern of lava flows, layers of
river gravel, then more lava flows, then more gravel layers, and so
on. The successive layers of basaltic lava and gravel were not
deformed and there was little doubt about the order in which
the volcanic eruptions had occurred.
Scrope went on to present a hypothesis. He believed it was
probable that volcanic activity not only raised land, but that it
also caused land nearby to subside later, after the intense magma
activity ceased. The seesawing earth could provide a hint for
how the freshwater-saltwater alternation might have occurred in
the Paris Basin.
Shortly after reading Scrope s book, Lyell set out to explore
the Auvergne region of south-central France himself. He arrived
there in May 1828, and was soon able to confirm all that Scrope
had observed, even extending the analysis by more accurately
sequencing the past volcanic activity. From central France, Lyell
continued on to Italy the country of choice for a geologist
THE HUTTONI AN REVOLUTI ON 187
recently convinced that volcanoes held the key to a theory. Once
in Italy, it did not take Lyell long to find what he was looking for.
He triumphantly wrote to his sister from Naples: I will let the
world know that the whole Isle of Isk, as the natives call it, has
risen from the sea 2,600 feet since the Mediterranean was peo-
pled with the very species of shell-fish which have now the
honor of living with, or being eaten by, us our common oyster
and cockle amongst the rest.
Essentially, what Lyell had found was more dramatic proof
of the uplift of stratified rocks that Hutton had postulated in
1785. Hutton had needed only to see veined granite at Glen
Tilt; Lyell needed to see something more dramatic evidence
that the strata had been raised half a mile in a relatively short
amount of time. Regardless, Lyell left Italy shortly afterward and
returned to England to continue work on the book he had
started before his trip.
Truly inspired by what he had seen and learned on the Con-
tinent, Lyell finished the first volume of his book in about one
year. Volume 1 of the Principles of Geology, Being an Attempt to
Explain the Former Changes of the Earth s Surface, by Reference
to Causes Now in Operation was published in London in July
1830. Two more volumes would follow, in 1832 and 1833. The
book, using Hutton and Playfair as starting points, and then
effectively synthesizing a huge body of work, became the defin-
ing book for the still-young field of geology. For at least the next
100 years, Principles of Geology would be the standard reference
for students and researchers of geology. Comparable to Adam
Smith s Wealth of Nations in its importance and immediate
188 THE MAN WHO FOUND TI ME
impact, it would go through five editions in the 1830s, and
eleven editions overall during the author s lifetime. Most impor-
tant, it finally, and firmly, established the earth as immeasurably
ancient.
The importance of Lyell s Principles of Geology was not lost
on Charles Darwin, who brought a copy with him aboard the
Beagle, the research vessel that would be his home from 1832 to
1836. He was given a copy of the first volume as a gift from one
of his Cambridge University professors before the ship set sail,
and he decided to read it before they reached the first destina-
tion on the itinerary. On the fourth page of the 500-plus-page
book, Lyell introduced his readers to James Hutton, stating that
Hutton was the first scholar to treat geology as its own subject,
and the first to separate it from cosmogonies. His doctrine on
this (point) was vehemently opposed at first, and although it has
gradually gained ground, and will ultimately prevail, it is yet far
from being established, said Lyell. Then, after reviewing the
theories and discoveries of previous thinkers in geology, the
author stated that [Hutton] was the first . . . to explain the for-
mer changes of the earth s crust, by reference exclusively to nat-
ural agents. Hutton labored to give fixed principles to geology, as
Newton had succeeded in doing to astronomy. Finally, Darwin
arrived at the key passage:
If any one ventured to doubt the possibility of our being
enabled to carry back our researches to the creation of the
present order of things, the granitic rocks were triumphantly
THE HUTTONI AN REVOLUTI ON 189
appealed to. On them seemed written in legible characters,
the memorable inscription Dinanzi a me non fur cose create
se non eterne, and no small sensation was excited when Hut-
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