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Downloaded from http://sp.lyellcollection.org/ at University of Arizona on June 24, 2014 Geological Society, London, Special Publications Lyell: the man and his times Leonard G. Wilson Geological Society, London, Special Publications 1998, v.143; p21-37. doi: 10.1144/GSL.SP.1998.143.01.04 Email alerting click here to receive free e-mail alerts when service new articles cite this article Permission click here to seek permission to re-use all or request part of this article Subscribe click here to subscribe to Geological Society, London, Special Publications or the Lyell Collection Notes © The Geological Society of London 2014 Downloaded from http://sp.lyellcollection.org/ at University of Arizona on June 24, 2014 Lyelh the man and his times LEONARD G. WILSON Department of History of Medicine, Medical School, Universi~' of Minnesota, Box 506 Mayo, 420 Delaware Street SE, Minneapolis, MN 55455, USA Abstract: Born in Scotland at the end of the eighteenth century, Charles Lyell spent his early life in Hampshire in the midst of the kind of comfortable rural society described in Jane Austen's novels. Influenced by his father, who was a keen botanist, the young Lyell collected butterflies and studied natural hisory. As a student at Oxford, he attended the Revd William Buckland's lectures on geology and continued to pursue geology while studying for the bar at Lincoln's Inn. In 1824 Lyell wrote his first scientific paper on the freshwater limestones and marls of Scottish lakes, demonstrating their detailed similarity to ancient freshwater formations among the Tertiary strata of the Paris Basin. Throughout his life Lyell remained an active field geologist, travelling throughout Europe from Sicily to Scandinavia. He made repeated geological tours through the Swiss and Austrian Alps and studied intensely the Tertiary strata of France, Belgium and England. He examined the geology of North America from Nova Scotia to the Mississippi Delta, working in the field in all weather. In 1853-1854 he spent several months studying the volcanic geology of Madeira and the Canary Islands and in 1857 and 1858 revisited Sicily to spend arduous weeks studying Mount Etna. In his seventy-fifth year and nearly blind, he travelled to the south of France to examine the caves of Aurignac and the Dordogne. In 1830 in the Principles of Geology Lyell challenged the assumption of a cooling Earth and of the greater former intensity of volcanic action and other geological forces. He separated geology from cosmology, pointing out that the crust of the Earth told nothing of its origin. What geology did reveal was an unending cycle of changes such as were still going on. In his metamorphic theory developed in the Elements of Geology, Lyell showed how the various classes of igneous and metamorphic rocks were formed in the gradual elevation of mountains. Lyell's theories brought about a revolution in geology, changing the meaning of geological data. In successive editions of the Principles and the Elements, two books of American travel, and the Antiquity of Man, Lyell's stature as an author and as a scientist grew steadily throughout his lifetime, the sale of his books often exceeding the publisher's expectations. Liberal in his sympathies, Lyell worked effectively for the reform of English university education and during the American Civil War defended the Union against its British critics Charles Lyell was born at Kinnordy House in the kind of quiet comfortable society described by Forfarshire, Scotland on 14 November 1797, the Jane Austen- comfortable but anxious, menaced son of Charles Lyell, laird of Kinnordy. Although by the threat of invasion from France, by the he would live most of his life in the nineteenth possibility of social unrest, and by disease. century, becoming one of the eminent scientists of At the age of seven Lyell was sent with his the Victorian age, Lyell began his childhood in the younger brother Tom to a small private school at long eighteenth century which ended only with the Ringwood. There in November 1805 Lyell and his defeat of Napoleon in 1815- a century of wars, school fellows celebrated the battle of Trafalgar naval battles, and blockades, and of the industrial with bonfires on the hills and mourned the death of revolution, of the rising power and prosperity of Nelson. In 1807 the boys were transferred to Great Britain, and epidemic disease. At the age of another school at Salisbury. Dreamy and absent- two months the young Charles Lyell was inoculated minded, Charles did not do well at school. In with smallpox, which for two weeks made him December 1808 he fell severely ill with pneumonia quite ill, just a half year before Edward Jenner and his father had to bring him home. For the l 1- would announce his discovery of vaccination. year-old boy this seeming calamity proved a In June 1798 Lyell's father took his wife and formative influence. During the four months that he infant son to the south of England and that autumn remained at home convalescing, Charles pored over leased Bartley Lodge, a country house with 80 the coloured plates of Donovan's Natural History acres of land at Lyndhurst on the edge of the New of British Insects (Donovan 1793-1813), using Forest in Hampshire. There Lyell grew up amidst which he identified various species of butterflies WmSON, L. G. 1998. Lyell: the man and his times. In: BLUNDELL,D. J. 8,~ SCOTT, A. C. (eds) 21 Lyetl: the Past is the Key to the Present. Geological Society, London, Special Publications, 143, 21-37. Downloaded from http://sp.lyellcollection.org/ at University of Arizona on June 24, 2014 22 L.G. WILSON accumulated in the recent past from the interactions of the river with the sea and the wind. In September Lyell visited the island of Staffa to see its famous basalt columns and Fingal's Cave. At Oxford in the spring of 1818 Lyell attended his second course of Buckland's lectures on mineralogy and geology. During the summer he accompanied his family on a tour on the Continent. At Paris, Lyell visited the Jardin des Plantes to see the bones of fossil animals described by Cuvier and to read Cuvier's books on fossil remains (Cuvier 1812) and on the geology of the Paris Basin (Cuvier & Brongniart 1811). At Chamonix in Switzerland he saw how the glacier of Bosson had recently advanced, treading down pine forests in front of it. While the Lyell family travelled along the roads in Switzerland, Lyell made parallel excursions in the Alps, often walking 35-40 miles a day. In the autumn he returned to Oxford for his final year and graduated there in the spring of 1819. In March 1819 Lyell was also elected a Member of the Geological Society of London. In 1820 Lyell began to study law at Lincoln's Inn, but his eyes, which had begun to trouble him the year before while he was studying for examin- Fig. 1. Sir Charles Lyell in 1853. Chalk drawing by ations at Oxford, again became so inflamed that he George Richmond. Courtesy of Lord Lyell of Kinnordy. had to suspend his studies temporarily while continuing to keep his terms. During the summer of 1820 he made a second tour on the Continent with his father, travelling through Belgium, up the Rhine and moths. As he recovered his strength he began to Valley and across the Alps into Italy as far as Rome. collect butterflies and to watch the metamorphosis While on vacation at Bartley Lodge in October of the caterpillar first into a pupa and then into the 1821 Lyell rode on horseback to Midhurst in adult butterfly. Throughout his life he would Sussex and from there rode across the South Downs delight in butterflies. Aquatic insects also fasci- to Lewes to make the acquaintance of the Lewes nated him and he spent mornings by a pond surgeon Gideon Mantell, who was actively watching them. collecting fossils of the Sussex strata. Lyell was In 1810 Charles and his brother Tom went to excited to learn of Mantell's discovery in the strata school at Midhurst in Sussex, but in 1813 Tom left of the Weald, beneath the Chalk, of the remains of Midhurst to enter the navy as a midshipman. land plants, the bones of land vertebrates, and Charles remained at Midhurst until 1815 and in his freshwater shells, such as might have lived in a final year there distinguished himself as a Latin river delta. The ancient delta in which the Weald scholar. In 1816 he entered Exeter College, Oxford, strata had accumulated had later sunk beneath the where he pursued the usual classical course of sea to be buried under the thick Chalk formation study. Nevertheless, he had already developed before being re-elevated and denuded. The Weald another interest. At Bartley Lodge in 1816 Lyell strata offered dramatic evidence for upward and had read Robert Bakewell's Introduction to downward movements of the land. They supported Geology (Bakewell 1815), from which he learned the views of the eighteenth-century Scottish of Dr James Hutton's theory that the Earth was geologist, Dr James Hutton of Edinburgh, who had indefinitely old. The succession of stratified rocks argued that sedimentary strata had been elevated showed no sign of a beginning because the oldest from beneath the sea by the internal heat of the rock strata represented sediments formed by the Earth. The German mineralogist Abraham Gottlob wearing down of pre-existing lands, long vanished. Werner had presented the opposite view that, At Oxford in 1817 Lyell attended William instead of the land's having risen, the sea had Buckland's lectures on mineralogy.

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