Charles Lyell and Modern Geology

CHAPTER IX.

STEADY PROGRESS

The "Principles of Geology" had been completed and published for thirteen years, yet catastrophism, as we learn from a correspondence with Edward Forbes,116 dated September, 1846, was dying hard. "Agassiz, Alcide D'Orbigny, and their followers [were still] trying to make out sudden revolutions in organic life in support of equally hypothetical catastrophes in the physical history of the globe."117 A remark in Forbes's reply is striking: —

"You are pleased to compliment my paper on its originality. Any praise from you must ever be among the greatest gratifications to me, and to any honest labourer in the great field of Nature. But I had rather hear the views I have set forward be proved not original than the contrary. It seems to me that the surest proof of the truth of such conclusions as I have summed up at the end of my essay is the fact of their not being original so far as one person is concerned, and of their having become manifest to more than one mind, either about the same time or successively, without communication. I believe laws discover themselves to individuals, and not that individuals discover laws. If a law have truth in it, many will see it about the same time."

In this month also the Lyells removed from Hart Street to 11, Harley Street. The house where they had spent fourteen years very happily was not left without regret, but it had become too small. They had no children, but a rapidly increasing geological collection takes up almost as much room as (though it is much more silent than) a growing family. The removal of a geological collection is a laborious business; and, besides this, Lyell was preparing a new edition of the "Principles" and writing a book about his recent travels in America. Still, to judge from his letters, he found time for some pleasant social distractions; for his letters to the old home at Kinnordy contain more often than formerly interesting references to talks with such men as Macaulay, Milman, and Rogers, Lord Clarendon and Lord Lansdowne. The seventh edition of the "Principles," condensed into a bulky single volume, was published early in 1847, and in the following June Lyell attended the meeting of the British Association at Oxford, which appears to have been no less pleasant than successful, although "out of twenty-four Heads of Houses only four were at Oxford to receive the Association." On this occasion, he writes, he became better acquainted with "Ruskin, who was secretary of our Geological Section." The remainder of this summer was spent in Scotland, and the rest of the year, with most of the following one, was devoted to quiet work. Still, Lyell took an active part in a crisis through which, about this time, the Royal Society was passing. A number of the Fellows, including most of those eminent in science, were anxious to raise the standard for admission into the Society. For many years past the "three letters" had often signified little more than an indication of good means and social position, coupled with a certain interest in scientific pursuits. The reformers prevailed, after a long struggle "with a set of obstructives compared with whom Metternich was a progressive animal," and the present status of the society is the result. Incidental remarks in Lyell's letters to his relations also indicate that he was becoming well known in circles other than scientific, of which a further proof was given in the autumn of 1848, when he received the offer of knighthood. Of course, in any country where "orders of merit" exist, other than Great Britain, Lyell would have been "decorated" years ago, but we manage things differently. As a rule, we let science and literature be their own reward, and, as an exception, confer the same distinction on a man who has won a world-wide reputation (provided he is fairly rich) and on an opulent tradesman who is accidently prominent on some auspicious occasion, or is a local wirepuller in party politics. Lyell went over from Kinnordy to Balmoral to receive the intended honour, and had, as he writes, "a most agreeable geological exploring on the banks of the Dee, into which Prince Albert entered with much spirit." In February, 1849, he was elected for the second time President of the Geological Society, and in the autumn, when at Kinnordy, was again invited to Balmoral, where he had some interesting talks with Prince Albert on subjects ranging from various educational and broad political questions to the entomology of Switzerland, Scotland, and the Isle of Wight.

In the middle of September he attended the meeting of the British Association at Birmingham, where he was for the third time President of the Geological Section. A few weeks later his father, whose health had been for some time failing, died at Kinnordy.118 The latter was a rich man, but as he made liberal provision for his daughters and younger sons, Sir Charles, though he succeeded to a considerable estate, found himself unable to afford the expense of keeping up Kinnordy as well as a house in London. Which, then, was henceforth to be his home? The attractions of Kinnordy were obvious, but the long distance from the metropolis was a serious drawback, while the duties of a resident landlord would have interfered much with his geological work, which would have been still more hampered by the severance from libraries, museums, and intercourse with fellow-workers. Thus he felt it his duty to retain his house in London and to let Kinnordy, though, as his mother and sisters retreated to the "dower house," he was able from time to time to visit the old place. The decision probably was less painful than it otherwise would have been from the fact that his boyhood had been spent in England. At any rate, it was a wise one, in regard to both his own reputation and the progress of science in general.

In the summer of 1850, Sir Charles augmented his experience and refreshed old memories by a tour in Germany. During this he saw for the first time the Roth-todt-liegende or Lower Permian conglomerates at Halle and at Eisenach, as well as the great lava streams which had supplied them with so much of their materials. Also he went to the Brocken in order to examine into Von Buch's extraordinary assertion that the granite had "come up in a bubble." This, it is needless to say, was speedily pricked. The loess also, that singular deposit which wraps like a mantle so much of the undulating ground in Northern Germany, evidently engaged his attention, and we find the fruits of these studies in a later work. In addition to all this, he did more than glance at the Maestricht Chalk, the "Wealden" coal of Hanover, the Tertiary deposits near Berlin, the Palæozoic rocks of the Hartz, and the scenery of the Saxon Switzerland.

His books, his scientific papers, and Presidential addresses to the Geological Society, his duties as a commissioner, at first for the Exhibition of 1851, and somewhat later for the reform of the University of Oxford, kept him pretty well employed till August, 1852, when he for the third time crossed the Atlantic to deliver another course of lectures at the Lowell Institute, Boston. Though he was back in England before Christmas, he found time for some geological work in America, the most important item in which was an excursion from Halifax in company with his old acquaintance, Mr. J. W. Dawson, to the Nova Scotian coalfield. On this occasion he passed through a fair amount of country still uncleared, which made the journey more interesting; he had also opportunities of appreciating the effects of ice in moving and piling up boulders on the shores of lakes, and obtained still more evidence in regard to this, on reaching the sea-coast in the neighbourhood of the coalfield. But their labour was rewarded by one discovery of exceptional importance. In the trunk of a tree which had died and become hollow in a forest of the Carboniferous period, they found entombed the skeleton of an animal. Whether this were a fish or a reptile was at first hotly disputed, but finally it proved to be an amphibian.

On his return to England, Sir Charles was kept for some time fully employed by the preparation of the ninth edition of the "Principles," but early in the summer of 1853 he went for the fourth time to America – on this occasion in company with Lord Ellesmere – as commissioner to the Exhibition held at New York. But now his time was fully taken up by official duties, and his visit was a short one, for he returned before the end of July, and was soon afterwards invited to visit Osborne and give some account of his journey to the Queen and Prince Albert.

Very early in 1854 he again left England, in company with Lady Lyell and Mr. and Mrs. Bunbury, to visit Madeira. Some three weeks were devoted to a careful study of the geology of that island,119 partly with the view of determining whether it afforded any support to Von Buch's favourite notion that volcanic cones were mainly formed by upheaval. As might be anticipated, the evidence was distinctly unfavourable. The island was proved to be mainly composed of volcanic material, cones of basaltic scoria, and great flows of similar lava, which had been piled successively one on another in the open air to a depth of about 4,000 feet. This mass had been subsequently pierced by dykes, worn by storm and stream, and in one or two places deeply grooved by rivers. There were, indeed, some underlying beds of marine origin, which, in one part of the island, rose to a height of 1,200 feet above the sea, and thus indicated a certain amount of upheaval; but even this was not of the kind which Von Buch's hypothesis required, while the rest of the evidence, including that afforded by some tuffs containing fossil plants, proved that the major part of the island had been formed above water.

From Madeira they went on to Teneriffe, Palma, and the Grand Canary. Of this part of the journey few details are given, but the results were afterwards incorporated with one of his books.120 To the Peak of Teneriffe the reference is comparatively brief. Of Palma the account is much fuller, for this island had been regarded by Von Buch, who visited it in 1825, as a type of his "craters of elevation" – an idea which was dispelled by Lyell's investigation. The Grand Canary, like Madeira, proved to be formed of masses of subaërial volcanic rock, perhaps even thicker than those in Madeira, which also rested upon some upraised marine deposits of Miocene age.

In the course of 1854 Sir Charles received from his own University the honorary degree of D.C.L. Much time was spent in working up the results of his last journey, some of which were communicated to the Geological Society.121 In the spring of 1855 he went to the Continent, studying, among other matters, the drifts in the neighbourhood of Berlin. In the summer he visited Scotland, made the acquaintance of Hugh Miller, worked over Arthur's Seat, Blackford Hill, and "the coast of Fife from Kinghorn to Kirkcaldy." It would be hard to find a set of sections better adapted for the study of ancient volcanic rocks, both contemporaneous and intrusive, than this coast affords; and his experience in Madeira and the Canaries enabled him to regard "the Edinburgh and Fife rocks with very different eyes."

One or two of his published letters about this period have a special interest, for they show that his views on the origin of species were undergoing a gradual modification. Speaking of some strange variations in the flower of an orchideous plant,122 he refers, half in jest, to "ugly facts, as Hooker, clinging (like me) to the orthodox faith, calls these and other abnormal vagaries"; and again, the following sentences do not come from a man who is firm in his belief123: —

"When Huxley, Hooker, and Wollaston were at Darwin's last week, they (all four of them) ran a tilt against species further, I believe, than they are deliberately prepared to go – Wollaston least unorthodox. I cannot easily see how they can go so far, and not embrace the whole Lamarckian doctrine. Huxley held forth last week about the oxlip, which he says is unknown on the Continent. If we had met with it in Madeira and nowhere else, or the cowslip, should we not have voted them true species? Darwin finds, among his fifteen varieties of the common pigeon, three good genera and about fifteen good species, according to the received mode of species and genus-making of the best ornithologists, and the bony skeleton varying with the rest! After all, did we not come from an ourang, seeing that man is of the Old World, and not from the American type of anthropomorphous mammalia?"

Sir Charles and Lady Lyell were again on the Continent in the summer of 1856, examining the drifts of Northern Germany, visiting Humboldt at Berlin, discussing geological questions, especially in regard to Carboniferous plants, at Breslau with Roemer and Goeppert; working over the Riesengebirge; then going on to Dresden, and passing through the Saxon Switzerland to Aussig. The coalfield north-west of the former city was not neglected, the great breccia beds of the Rothliegende were again examined, and account was taken of Ramsay's opinion that certain British Permian breccias were glacial in origin. Close attention was also bestowed upon the great masses of hard quartzose grit, through which the Elbe has carved its way – the Quader of Saxony; for this formation, "a grit wholly deficient in calcareous matter, corresponds to the more purely calcareous rock (Chalk) of Great Britain, and yet contains here and there the same shells." He did not neglect the Brown Coal124 between Töplitz and Aussig, and, on reaching Prague, made the acquaintance of Barrande, who took him to see those older Palæozoic rocks among which the great palæontologist had been labouring for nearly a quarter of a century. Then the travellers proceeded to Vienna, and after that to the Styrian Alps, to visit various interesting sections in the Salzkammergut, such as the classic ground at Gosau and the Triassic limestones near Hallstadt, where the last survivors of the Palæozoic ages are entombed with the representatives of the period. His letters, like many others of earlier date, indicate that, notwithstanding the fascinations of geology, neither living molluscs, nor insects, nor plants had ceased to interest. They returned by way of Munich, Ulm, Zürich and Paris, reaching England about the end of October.

The summer of 1857 was devoted to another Continental tour, rather more restricted than the former, but by no means unimportant. They went leisurely through Belgium and up the Rhine into Switzerland, halting at different places either to study sections of special interest or to confer with eminent geologists. Part of a letter written at this time125 gives a valuable insight into the intention of these journeys and the character of the author, who was now in his sixtieth year: —

"I hope to continue for years travelling, making original observations, and, above all, going to school to the younger, but not, for all that, young geologists, whom I meet everywhere, so far ahead of us old stagers that they are familiar with branches of the science, fast rising into importance, which were not thought of when I first began."

Switzerland, obviously, was visited on this occasion with a very definite purpose. De Charpentier, Escher von der Linth, and other local geologists, had been for some time asserting that the glaciers of the Alps, at no remote epoch in geological history, had attained to an enormous size, had buried the Swiss lowland and covered it with morainic deposits, and had even welled up high against the flanks of the Jura, where the huge blocks of protogine from the Mont Blanc range – such as Pierre à bot and its companion erratics, full 800 feet above the Lake of Neuchâtel – indicated one position of its terminal moraine. Formerly, in common with many other geologists, Sir Charles had supposed these blocks to have been transported from the Alpine peaks by ice-rafts on the sea, at a time when the whole region stood at a considerably lower level. But now, after examining the erratics, their regular and significant distribution, the other glacial débris, the ice-worn surfaces of rock beneath it, and ascertaining the distinctly terrestrial character of the deposits all about the mountains, he unreservedly admitted land-ice to be the only possible agent, and, in accepting this hypothesis, perceived clearly that he must not shrink from applying it to Scotland. Then he plunged into the mountains to examine and follow the track of the retreating ice-sheet up to the glaciers which are still at work among the higher peaks, passing up the valley of the Reuss, crossing the Furka Pass, and descending the Rhone valley to Visp, but turning aside to examine the earth pillars on the flank of the Eggishorn.126 Another, and a larger group of these pillars – instances of the erosive action of rain-water on morainic material – was seen near Stalden, in the Visp-thal; but these had been damaged by the earthquake which two years before had severely shaken this part of the Alps. At Zermatt the characteristics of glaciers and the effects of ice were carefully studied among the grandest of Alpine scenery; then, on returning to the Rhone Valley, they crossed the Alps by the Simplon and went on to Turin. Here he took the opportunity of visiting the huge moraine near Ivrea, which rises from the lowland like a range of hills, and of investigating the erratics of the Superga, satisfying himself that they really belonged to the Miocene deposits of that hill, and were indicative of the existence of glaciers in the Alps of that epoch, which had been large enough to reach the sea-level, and to send off masses of ice laden with boulders. Then they went on to Genoa, and along the beautiful Riviera di Levante to Pisa; thence, after a short visit to Florence, proceeding direct from Leghorn to Naples. Here, he once more examined Vesuvius, and had the luck to see lava streams actually in motion – "some going fast, others going very slow" – a sight which "gave him many new ideas." A study also of the dykes of Somma convinced him that they afforded no support to De Beaumont's idea of a distension of the mass.127

From Naples he went to Sicily, in order to make a second examination of Etna, and then, after rejoining Lady Lyell, spent some time in the neighbourhood of Rome, visiting the old volcanic district of the Alban Hills, and making excursions, as they travelled northward, into the Apennines. They returned through France, reaching London towards the end of December.

But, for a worker so thorough in his methods, this visit to the volcanoes was not enough, so next year, after spending the earlier part of the summer with his brother's128 family in the neighbourhood of Darmstadt, he left Lady Lyell there, and set off towards the end of August for a third examination both of Vesuvius and of Etna. Travelling rapidly up the valley of the Rhine, he went by Geneva to Culoz, and over Mont Cenis to Turin and Genoa, without halting for geological work, and thence by sea to Naples. Lava was still flowing from Vesuvius, that black mass, with its strange rope-like folds and slaggy wrinkles,129 now so well known to every visitor. Accompanied by Professor Guiscardi – one of the most genial and helpful of leaders – Sir Charles made his way to a vent at the base of the principal cone, where the lava was still welling forth from "a small grotto, looking as fluid as water where it first issued, and moving at a pace which you would call rapid in a river. White-hot, at first, in a canal four or five feet broad, then red before it had got on a yard, then in a few feet beginning to be covered by a dark scum, which thickened fast and was carried along on the surface." But the great question, whether a volcano was mainly a "crater of elevation" or a "crater of ejection," was ever present to his mind; so, in addition to studying the grand sections displayed in the crags of Monte Somma, he devoted two days to the exploration of the ravines which furrow its outer slopes. He also found time to have another look at the Temple of Serapis, and to examine the Solfatara, which is a striking example of a crater at once broad and low.

After a week's halt at Naples, Sir Charles resumed his journey to Sicily, landing at Messina on September 10th. By the 15th he was once more on the slopes of Etna, and had begun a twelve-day period of hard work on the mountain, passing five nights in very rough quarters at the Casa degli Inglesi, 9,600 feet above sea-level. During this stay he ascended the principal cone, carefully examining both the larger and the smaller craters, and descended into the Val del Bove, a laborious expedition, but one which well repaid him by throwing much light on the structure of the volcanic mass. Still he was not yet satisfied, for after he had descended to Zafarana, he returned to spend another night at the Casa degli Inglesi in order to satisfy himself about one or two details. From Zafarana also he went again to the Val del Bove, checking and increasing his notes, and devoted another day to a most interesting excursion through picturesque scenery as far as the watershed between this vast hollow in the mountain side and the neighbouring Val di Tripodo. On all these excursions Sir Charles, as far as possible, rode, remarking to his wife, "I feel here that a good mule is like presenting an old geologist with a young pair of legs." Work on the mountain ended, he spent a little time in examining the Tertiary beds of the neighbouring lowland, and then, getting back to Messina about the middle of October, returned in due course to England.