otal of literary attractiveness.”) And o America to give a series of lectures in Boston, selloutaudiences of t a time packed into titute to ranquilizingdescriptions of marine zeolites and seismic perturbations in Campania.
t t especially in Britain, men of learning venturedinto tryside to do a little “stone-breaking,” as t. It takenseriously, and tended to dress e gravity, in top s and dark suits, exceptfor t it o do his fieldwork in anacademic gown.
ttracted many extraordinary figures, not least tioned Murc t ty or so years of er foxes, converting aeronauticallyco puffs of drifting feat, and sal agility needed to read times or play a erest in rocks and became ounding sness a titan of geologicalthinking.
t and autive pamps itles like “Revolution Bloodsed in a faintly lunatic-sounding conspiracy called “t,” in o s King George III in t as in ter. Parkinson co Australia before t lydropped. Adopting a more conservative approaco life, erest in geologyand became one of ty and tant geological text, Organic Remains of a Former orld, oday, udy of tion t knoo fame. In 1785, ory to ural ory museum in a raffle. ter Square, on Lever, rained collecting of natural til1805, and tion quite as remarkable in cer but more influential t ton died and only seventy miles atis of Scots were feckless drunks.
As tern eentury gentlemen scientists, Lyell came from abackground of comfortable ellectual vigor. inction of being a leading auty on t Dante and on mosses.
(Ortricium lyelli, ors to tryside some time on, is named for erest in natural ory, but it Oxford, ion to geology.
Buckland of a cy. s, but least as mucricities. icularly noted for a menagerieof o roam to eat ion. Depending ons to Buckland’s be served baked guinea pig, mice inbatter, roasted Asian sea slug. Buckland o find meritin t ting. Almostinevitably, y on coprolites—fossilized feces—and ablemade entirely out of ion of specimens.
Even wing serious science his manner w