Lyell, Charles: Principles of Geology

Author(s):  
Marianne Sommer
1894 ◽  
Vol 1 (6) ◽  
pp. 257-263
Author(s):  
Henry H. Howorth

There are signs accumulating everywhere that the views so logically pressed to their conclusion by Hutton and Playfair, and by a great catena of geologists, since the appearance of the first edition of Lyell's “Principles of Geology,” have received a certain check; and no one can read the works of the great Continental geologists without seeing that there is a tendency to reconsider the position, and to hark back to the views of another school of teachers.


1896 ◽  
Vol 30 (352) ◽  
pp. 271-279 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. C. Hartzell,

2021 ◽  
pp. 6-33
Author(s):  
Elisabeth Ervin-Blankenheim

This chapter and the next one cover the way in which geology came to be a science in its own right, spanning the early centuries of geology. Lives of crucial individual scientists from the sixteenth century to the beginning of the twentieth century are discussed by relating the stories and discoveries of each, commencing with Leonardo da Vinci and continuing with the European geologists, including Nicholaus Steno, Abraham Werner, James Hutton, Charles Lyell, and early fossilists such as Etheldred Benet. Steno, Werner, Hutton and Lyell, and other early geologists revealed and wrote about the basic principles of geology, painstakingly untangling and piecing together the threads of the Earth’s vast history. They made sense of jumbled sequences of rocks, which had undergone dramatic changes since they were formed, and discerned the significance of fossils, found in environments seemingly incongruous to where the creatures once lived, as ancient forms of life. They set the stage for further research on the nature of the Earth and life on it, providing subsequent generations of geologists and those who study the Earth the basis on which to refine and flesh out the biography of the Earth.


2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 447-451
Author(s):  
Ulrich Hambach ◽  
Ian Smalley

Abstract The two critical books, launching the study and appreciation of loess, were ‘Charakteristik der Felsarten’ (CdF) by Karl Caesar von Leonhard, published in Heidelberg by Joseph Engelmann, in 1823-4, and ‘Principles of Geology’ (PoG) by Charles Lyell, published in London by John Murray in 1830-3. Each of these books was published in three volumes and in each case the third volume contained a short piece on loess (about 2-4 pages). These two books are essentially the foundations of loess scholarship. In CdF Loess [Loefs] was first properly defined and described; section 89 in vol. 3 provided a short study of the nature and occurrence of loess, with a focus on the Rhine valley. In PoG there was a short section on loess in the Rhine valley; this was in vol.3 and represents the major dissemination of loess awareness around the world. A copy of PoG3 (Principles of Geology vol. 3) reached Charles Darwin on the Beagle in Valparaiso in 1834; worldwide distribution. Lyell and von Leonhard met in Heidelberg in 1832. Von Leonhard and Heinrich Georg Bronn (1800-1862) showed Lyell the local loess. These observations provided the basis for the loess section in PoG3. Lyell acknowledged the influence of his hosts when he added a list of loess scholars to PoG; by the 5th edition in 1837 the list comprised H.G. Bronn, Karl Caesar von Leonhard (1779-1862), Ami Boue (1794-1881), Voltz, Johann Jakob Noeggerath (1788-1877), J. Steininger, P. Merian, Rozet, C.F.H. von Meyer (1801-1869), Samuel Hibbert (1782-1848) and Leonard Horner (1785-1864); a useful list of loess pioneers. The loess is a type of ground that has only recently been established, and it seems, the peculiarity of the Rhine region, and of a very general but inconsistent spread.” H.G. Bronn 1830


1919 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 158-162
Author(s):  
R. Mountford Deeley

From time to time I have been given an opportunity to discuss in the Geological Magazine the question of the cause or causes of climatic variations. The subject is one of deep interest to the geologist. Even Lyell, in the first edition of his Principles of Geology, gave a good deal of space to it, but contented himself with merely pointing out that variations in the distribution of the land would lead to changes in the climate. He wisely limited himself to this aspect of the question, for, at that time, the directions of the winds in middle latitudes were not such as meteorological theory would have led us to expect.


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