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'But I shall not work it; I still dread my own spectacles. I dare not trust myself alone to verify a theory of Murchison's or Lyell's. How dare I trust myself in this? 'Then do not trust yourself alone: come and see what others are doing.
The theory hitches on wonderfully well to Lyell's uniformitarian theory in geology that the thing that has been is the thing that is and shall be that the natural operations now going on will account for all geological changes in a quiet and easy way, only give them time enough, so connecting the present and the proximate with the farthest past by almost imperceptible gradations a view which finds large and increasing, if not general, acceptance in physical geology, and of which Darwin's theory is the natural complement.
GEOLOGY AND PALEONTOLOGY. In geology, from the publication of Lyell's work , the tendency has more and more prevailed to explain the geological structure of the earth by the slow operation of forces now in action, rather than by violent convulsions and catastrophes. In 1831 Sedgwick and Murchison, likewise English geologists, commenced their labors.
By the time he reached the Brazilian shore he was filled with Lyell's conception that the present is the child of the past, developing out of it in orderly sequence. Lyell expressly denied that this is true of the animal and plant world. He applied it only to the face of the earth, with its mountains of uplift and its valleys of erosion.
For my part, following out Lyell's metaphor, I look at the natural geological record, as a history of the world imperfectly kept, and written in a changing dialect; of this history we possess the last volume alone, relating only to two or three countries. Of this volume, only here and there a short chapter has been preserved; and of each page, only here and there a few lines.
M. A. d'Orbigny has given nearly a similar account of these dogs, tom. i. p. 175. I must express my obligations to Mr. Keane, at whose house I was staying on the Berquelo, and to Mr. Lumb at Buenos Ayres, for without their assistance these valuable remains would never have reached England. Lyell's Principles of Geology, vol. iii. p. 63.
Accordingly, at the age of twenty-two, we find him embarked on a journey around the world. In the cabin of the Beagle he had abundant time, in his long sail across the Atlantic, to read the two volumes of Lyell's "Elements of Geology," which Henslow had handed him, with the suggestion that he read it, but on no account believe it.
Here Lyell's doctrine paves the way, by showing that in the physical geology there is no general or absolute break between the two, probably no greater between the latest tertiary and the quaternary period than between the latter and the present time. So far, the Lyellian view is, we suppose, generally concurred in.
My Father, after long reflection, prepared a theory of his own, which, as he fondly hoped, would take the wind out of Lyell's sails, and justify geology to godly readers of 'Genesis'. It was, very briefly, that there had been no gradual modification of the surface of the earth, or slow development of organic forms, but that when the catastrophic act of creation took place, the world presented, instantly, the structural appearance of a planet on which life had long existed.
But now we may read in the Supplement to Lyell's 'Manual, published in 1858, clear evidence of the existence of whales in the upper greensand, some time before the close of the secondary period. I may give another instance, which from having passed under my own eyes has much struck me.
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