Lyell, Vol. II. pages 40,
41 (Letter to Leonard Horner, 1838), 2 vols. London, 1881.) of the
discussion was as follows: "In support of my heretical notions," Darwin
"opened upon De la Beche, Phillips and others his whole battery of the
earthquakes and volcanoes of the Andes, and argued that spaces at least
a thousand miles long were simultaneously subject to earthquakes and
volcanic eruptions, and that the elevation of the Pampas, Patagonia,
etc., all depended on a common cause; also that the greater the
contortions of strata in a mountain chain, the smaller must have been
each separate and individual movement of that long series which was
necessary to upheave the chain. Had they been more violent, he
contended that the subterraneous fluid matter would have gushed out and
overflowed, and the strata would have been blown up and annihilated. (It
is interesting to compare this with what Darwin wrote to Henslow
seven years earlier.) He therefore introduces a cooling of one small
underground injection, and then the pumping in of other lava, or
porphyry, or granite, into the previously consolidated and first-formed
mass of igneous rock. (Ideas somewhat similar to this suggestion have
recently been revived by Dr See ("Proc. Am. Phil. Soc." Vol. XLVII.
1908, page 262.).) When he had done his description of the reiterated
strokes of his volcanic pump, De la Beche gave us a long oration about
the impossibility of strata of the Alps, etc., remaining flexible
for such a time as they must have done, if they were to be tilted,
convoluted, or overturned by gradual small shoves. He never, however,
explained his theory of original flexibility, and therefore I am as
unable as ever to comprehend why flexiblility is a quality so limited in
time.

"Phillips then got up and pronounced a panegyric upon the "Principles
of Geology", and although he still differed, thought the actual cause
doctrine had been so well put, that it had advanced the science and
formed a date or era, and that for centuries the two opposite doctrines
would divide geologists, some contending for greater pristine forces,
others satisfied, like Lyell and Darwin, with the same intensity as
nature now employs.

"Fitton quizzed Phillips a little for the warmth of his eulogy, saying
that he (Fitton) and others, who had Mr Lyell always with them, were in
the habit of admiring and quarrelling with him every day, as one
might do with a sister or cousin, whom one would only ki