as generally singular. Once Mrs.
Buckland found , ement: “My dear, I believe t Csteps are undoubtedly testudinal.”
togeto tcclote,oise.
Plunking it onto te, t foro t t itsfootprints did indeed matcudying. C Buckland a buffoon—t Lyell appeared to find o go touring land in 1824. It er trip t Lyell decided to abandon a career in lae o geology full-time.
Lyell remely ssig t of ,ually altogetpeculiarity , ed by t, of taking up improbable positions onfurniture—lying across ting of a canding up” (to quote en tocks touc King’s College in London from 1831 to 1833. It imet ed upon ts first voiced byton a generation earlier. (Altton in tudent of Playfair’s reon’s day and Lyell’s troversy, en confused unian–Plutonian dispute. ttlebecame an argument betastroparianism—unattractive terms for animportant and very long-running dispute. Catastrops, as you mig from t t cataclysmic events—floods principally, ropunism are often ogetastropicularly comforting to clerics like Buckland because it alloo incorporate to serious scientific discussions. Uniformitarians by contrast believedt c nearly all Eartime. ton it people read, and so people’s minds, t.
Lyell believed t ts eady—t everyt could be explained by events still going on today. Lyell and s didn’t just disdain catastropested it. Catastrops believed textinctions of a series in and replaceds—a belief t turalist t. o “a succession ofrubbers of t table and called for a neoo convenient a o explain tedto foster indolence, and to blunt ty,” sniffed Lyell.
Lyell’s oversig inconsiderable. o explain convincingly ain ranges of coaccept Louis Agassiz’s idea of ice ages—“tion of termed it—and t mammals “ fossiliferousbeds.” ed tion t animals and plants suffered sudden anniions, andbelieved t all tiles, fised since time. On all of timately be proved wrong.
Yet it o overstate Lyell’s influence. t tions in Lyell’s lifetime and contained notions t so tietury. Darook a first edition e a