those which Lyell successfully eliminated from sober
geological speculation.

In fact, no one was better aware of this than Lyell himself. (Lyell,
with perfect right, claims this position for himself. He speaks of
having "advocated a law of continuity even in the organic world, so far
as possible without adopting Lamarck's theory of transmutation"...

"But while I taught that as often as certain forms of animals and
plants disappeared, for reasons quite intelligible to us, others took
their place by virtue of a causation which was beyond our
comprehension; it remained for Darwin to accumulate proof that there is
no break between the incoming and the outgoing species, that they are
the work of evolution, and not of special creation...

"I had certainly prepared the way in this country, in six editions of
my work before the 'Vestiges of Creation' appeared in 1842 [1844], for
the reception of Darwin's gradual and insensible evolution of
species."--'Life and Letters,' Letter to Haeckel, volume ii. page 436.
November 23, 1868.) If one reads any of the earlier editions of the
'Principles' carefully (especially by the light of the interesting
series of letters recently published by Sir Charles Lyell's
biographer), it is easy to see that, with all his energetic opposition
to Lamarck, on the one hand, and to the ideal quasi-progressionism of
Agassiz, on the other, Lyell, in his own mind, was strongly disposed to
account for the origination of all past and present species of living
things by natural causes. But he would have liked, at the same time,
to keep the name of creation for a natural process which he imagined to
be incomprehensible.

In a letter addressed to Mantell (dated March 2, 1827), Lyell speaks of
having just read Lamarck; he expresses his delight at Lamarck's
theories, and his personal freedom from any objection based on
theological grounds. And though he is evidently alarmed at the
pithecoid origin of man involved in Lamarck's doctrine, he observes:--

"But, after all, what changes species may really undergo! How
impossible will it be to distinguish and lay down a line, beyond which
some of the so-called extinct species have never passed into recent
ones."

Again, the following remarkable passage occurs in the postscript of a
letter addressed to Sir John Herschel in 1836:--

"In regard to the origination of new species, I am very glad to find
that you think it probable that it may be carried on throu