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Poulett Scrope on the Volcanoes of Auvergne: Lyellian Time and Political Economy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

Martin J. S. Rudwigk
Affiliation:
Centrum Algemene Vorming, Vrije Universiteit, De Boelelaan 1081, Amsterdam, Netherlands.

Extract

Early in 1826, at the age of 28, Charles Lyell began writing the first of a series of articles for J. G. Lockhart, the new editor of the Quarterly review. These articles gave him his first opportunity to express to the educated public his views on the state of science in general, and of geology in particular, in English society. According to the convention of the Quarterly, each article was nominally a review of one or more recently published works, but like other reviewers Lyell clearly chose them as ‘pegs’ on which to hang his own arguments. In content, the articles form a kind of ‘gradualistic’ series, rather like his own later interpretations of geological phenomena. At one end of the series (though published third) was an essay on the place of science in general in English university education. Another article (the first to appear in print) focused on some of the English institutions specifically devoted to science. Here there was a hint that the need for reform in the place of science in English society was not unrelated to a similar need for reform in Lyell's chosen branch of science. The next article enlarged on this hint by examining the publications of the Geological Society of London, on which Lyell had recently served as Secretary. This essay expressed for the first time in a general context Lyell's characteristic emphasis on the need for actualistic comparison between present and past. Finally, what he needed to complete the series was an article in which he could show in detail the positive explanatory advantages of following this method in geology. The ‘peg’ which he chose for this purpose was a single work, George Poulett Scrope's Memoir on the geology of central France.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © British Society for the History of Science 1974

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References

This article is based on historical fieldwork in the Massif Central in 1967 and 1968. On the latter occasion I had the pleasure and benefit of the company of Dr Kenneth Taylor, who helped me to understand the eighteenth-century background of the debate I discuss here. I am also indebted to the University of Connecticut for inviting me as a Visiting Professor in 1972, when I was able to write a first draft of this article, and to my former colleagues at Cambridge for making possible the period of leave in which the work was completed. I am grateful to Dr Jonathan Hodge and Mr Roy Porter for some very helpful comments on the article.

1 Scrope, G. Poulett, Memoir on the geology of central France, including the volcanic formations of Auvergne, the Velay and the Vivarais (London, 1827), P. 165Google Scholar; cited hereafter as Memoir. The second edition, The geology and extinct volcanoes of central France (London, 1858)Google Scholar, is substantially altered.

2 Wilson, Leonard G., Charles Lyell. The years to 1841: the revolution in geology (New Haven and London, 1972), pp. 143–73Google Scholar, gives an account of the writings of these articles.

3 [Lyell, Charles], ‘Art. VIII’ [Review of works on university education], Quarterly review, xxxvi (1827), 216–68.Google Scholar

4 [Lyell, Charles], ‘Art. VIII’ [Review of works published by scientific institutions], Quarterly review, xxxiv (1826), 153–79.Google Scholar

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7 The illustrations form a separate volume of the Memoir. For his panoramic sketches Scrope used a system of geological colouring, which was later adopted by Lyell for the frontispieces of volumes 2 and 3 of the Principles of geology. In the second edition of the Memoir the illustrations are reduced in size, uncoloured, and much less striking.

8 MrsLyell, , Life letters and journals of Sir Charles Lyell, Bart. (2 vols., London, 1881), i. 355.Google Scholar

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11 Guettard, Jean Étienne, ‘Mémoire sur quelques montagnes de la France qui ont été des volcans’, MÉmoires de l'Académie Royale des Sciences, vol. for 1752 (1756), 2759.Google ScholarDe Beer, Gavin, ‘The volcanoes of Auvergne’, Annals of science, xviii (1964), 4961.Google Scholar

12 Desmarest, , ‘Mémoire sur l'origine et la nature du Basalte à grandes colonnes polygones, déterminées par l'histoire naturelle de cette pierre, observée en Auvergne’, Mémoires de l'Académie Royale des Sciences, vol. for 1771 (1774), 705–75.Google ScholarTaylor, Kenneth L., ‘Nicholas Desmarest and geology in the eighteenth century’, in Schneer, Cecil J. (ed.), Toward a history of geology (Cambridge, Mass., 1969), pp. 339–56.Google Scholar

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14 De Montlosier, , Essai sur la théorie des volcans d'Auvergne (Paris, 1789Google Scholar; new edn., Clermont, 1802). I have consulted the later edition, which is said to be a corrected re-impression of the original.

15 Daubeny, Charles, ‘On the volcanoes of the Auvergne’, Edinburgh new philosophical journal, iii (1820), 359–67; iv (1821), 8997, 300–15.Google Scholar The last part appeared in the issue for April 1821; Scrope arrived at Clermont early in June.

16 His main direct source, which referred to earlier work in Auvergne, was Boué, Ami, ‘Short comparison of the volcanic rocks of France with those of a similar nature found in Scotland’, Edinburgh philosophical journal, ii (1820), 326–32.Google Scholar

17 In the dialect of the region, the word ‘puy’ denoted any steep-sided and more or less conical hill. Such hills include cones of volcanic débris (e.g. Puy de la Vache), ‘plugs’ of solid igneous rock (e.g. Puy de Dôme), and isolated outliers capped with basalt (e.g. Puy Girou).

18 I Both Figure 1 and Figure 2 have been re-drawn from Desmarest's 1823 map, op. cit. (29), because it is clearer and more detailed than Scrope's. There are no substantial differences between the two maps, within the areas shown here.

19 Daubeny, , op cit. (15), pp. 360–1.Google Scholar

20 Daubeny, Charles, A description of active and extinct volcanoes: with remarks on their origin, their chemical phaenomena, and the character of their products, as determined by the condition of the earth during the period of their formation (London, 1826).Google Scholar Daubeny was elected Professor of Chemistry at Oxford in 1822, in succession to John Kidd.

21 Buckland, William, Vindiciae geologicae: or the connexion of geology with religion explained (Oxford, 1820).Google Scholar

22 Daubeny, , ‘Sketch of the geology of Sicily’, Edinburgh philosophical journal, xiii (1825), 107–18, 254–69Google Scholar; see p. 264 n.: also op. cit. (20), p. 9.

23 Leroy E. Page, ‘Diluvialism and its critics in Great Britain in the early nineteenth century’, in Schneer, , op. cit. (12), pp. 257–71.Google Scholar

24 ‘Rapport fait à l'Institut national, par le citoyen Dolomieu, ingénieur des mines, sur ses voyages de l'an V et de l'an VI’, Journal des mines, vii (an VI, 1798), 385432.Google Scholar Dolomieu attributed the erosion of valleys to the sudden emergence of the present continents from beneath the sea, an event which, following Deluc, he regarded as geologically recent. But he emphasized that such a conclusion might be correct even if the religious opinions that had first suggested it (i.e. Deluc's version of a diluvial theory) were themselves ‘absurdes’. See his ‘Mémoire sur les pierres composées et sur les roches’, Observations sur la physique, sur l'histoire naturelle et sur les arts, xxxix (1791), 374407Google Scholar; xl (1792) 41–62 203–18, 372–403; see xl (1792), 41 n.

25 Desmarest, Nicholas, ‘Extrait d'un mémoire sur la détermination de quelques époques de la nature par les produits de volcans, et sur l'usage de ces époques dans l'étude des volcans’, Observations sur la physique, sur l'histoire naturelle et sur les arts, xiii (1779), 115–26.Google Scholar See also Taylor, op. cit. (12).

26 Montlosier, , op. cit. (14), p. 23.Google Scholar

27 Memoir, p. viii.Google Scholar

28 MrsLyell, , op. cit. (8), i. 188.Google Scholar

29 Memoir, p. 36.Google Scholar Desmarest published some small maps to illustrate his ‘époques’, but the full version of his superb map of Auvergne was published posthumously by his son in 1823 (too late for Scrope to have used it for his fieldwork, but in time for him to have incorporated it into his own, closely similar map): Desmarest, , Carte topographique et minéralogique d'une partie du département du Puy de Dôme dans le ci-devant province d'Auvergne où sont déterminées la marche & les limites des matières fondues & rejettées par les volcans ainsi que les courants anciens & modernes pour servir aux recherches sur l'histoire naturelle des volcans (Paris, 1823).Google Scholar

30 Memoir, p. 40 n.Google Scholar

31 Daubeny, , op. cit. (15), p. 362.Google Scholar

32 Memoir, p. 50.Google Scholar

33 ibid., p. 62, and Pl. IV. See also Pl. [VI] (unnumbered), for the Puy de La Vache crater and its flow, with Lac d'Aidat.

34 ibid., pp. 58–61, and Pl. III. Compare Montlosier, , op. cit. (14), pp. 2937Google Scholar, who termed it ‘un des plus beaux traits de géologie que le naturaliste puisse désirer’.

35 Memoir, p. 84.Google Scholar

36 ibid., p. 85. Puy Rouge, also known as Puy Chalucet or Chaluzet from the hamlet at its foot, was apparently unknown to Desmarest and is not shown on his map. Dolomieu referred to it, and Scrope described it more fully, though it lay outside the area of his map. I have inserted it on Figure 2 from a modern map.

37 ibid., p. 163.

38 ibid., p. 85.

39 Figure 3 reproduces the right half of Scrope's panoramic Plate XIV. The left half, reproduced as Figure 27 in Wilson, op. cit. (2), shows the gorge more clearly but does not show the volcanic cone which gave the gorge its significance. See also Memoir, PI. XV.

40 ibid., p. 154.

41 It is of some interest to note that modern radiometric dating has established the age of the ‘modern’ lavas in Auvergne as only slightly greater than Daubeny's estimate, and far less than the age implied by Scrope: material under the Puy de la Vache flow at St Saturnin (Figure 1 ) has yielded a radiocarbon date of 7,65O±350 b.p. (i.e. about 5,700 b.c.). See Rudel, Aimé, Les volcans d'Auvergne (2nd edn., Clermont, 1963), p. 94.Google Scholar This book contains some striking aerial photographs of the volcanic cones.

42 Memoir, p. 89.Google Scholar

43 ibid. p. 90, and Pl. II.

44 ibid. pp. 44–5, and Pl. XII.

45 ibid. p. 46.

46 ibid. pp. 161–2.

47 ibid. p. 163.

48 ibid. p. 162.

49 ibid., pp. 46, 162.

50 Montlosier, , op. cit. (14), pp. 112–20Google Scholar: ‘on trouve à tous les âges des médailles frappées par la nature, pour attester toutes les gradations de ses travaux et de sa marche’ (p. 118).

51 ibid., p. 95.

52 ibid., p. 118.

53 ibid., pp. 12O, 43.

54 Memoir, pp. 101–4.Google Scholar

55 ibid., pp. 166–8.

56 ibid., p. x.

57 Scrope, G. Poulett, Considerations on volcanos, the probable causes of their phenomena, the laws which determine their march, the disposition of their products, and their connexion with the present state and past history of the globe: leading to the establishment of a new theory of the earth (London, 1825).Google Scholar

58 ibid., pp. iv–vi.

59 ibid., p. xxxi.

60 ibid., p. 240.

61 ibid., pp. 237–9.

62 Rudwick, M. J. S., ‘Uniformity and progression: reflections on the structure of geological theory in the age of Lyell’, in Roller, Duane H. D. (ed.), Perspectives in the history of science and technology (Norman, Oklahoma, 1971), pp. 209–27.Google Scholar

63 As an early example, Dolomieu, op. cit. (24), thought the most recent ‘revolution’ (which had excavated the valleys) dated from not more than 10,000 years ago, but that the preceding time had been so immeasurably long that millions of years had been like minutes in a human life. Some such proportion was obvious to all (including, for example, Buckland and Daubeny) who were aware of die vast thickness of geological formations, many of which had clearly been deposited extremely slowly under tranquil conditions.

64 It was therefore not until the advent of the glacial theory, postulating an extraordinary event in the form of an Ice Age, that the diluvial phenomena began to receive a satisfactory explanation. See Rudwick, M. J. S., ‘The glacial theory’, History of Science, viii (1970), 136–57.Google Scholar

65 Daubeny, , op. cit. (20), p. 14.Google Scholar

66 In Auvergne he would have seen the several hundred feet of finely laminated Tertiary sediments that underlie (and are therefore older than) even the ‘ancient’ basalts; and he was certainly aware from general geological knowledge that these sediments in turn are all very ‘young’ by geological standards.

67 Daubeny, op. cit. (20 and 22). The phrases were of course traditional.

68 The literature on this point is vast. For an introduction that stresses its application to geology, see Haber, Francis C., The age of the world. Moses to Darwin (Baltimore, 1959)Google Scholar, and ‘The Darwinian revolution in the concept of time’, Studium generale, xxiv (1971), 289307Google Scholar; also G. J. Whitrow, ‘Reflections on the history of the concept of time’, ibid., xxiii (1970), 498–508.

69 Daubeny was an Anglican layman of Broad Church, anti-Tractarian persuasion: see his Miscellanies: being a collection of memoirs and essays on scientific and literary subjects, published at various times (Oxford and London, 1867), pp. xiiixviGoogle Scholar; also his reprinted review of Lecky and defence of Baden Powell, ibid., part IV, pp. 3–40. Although these writings date from much later in his life, I know of no evidence that he did not hold the same beliefs in the 1820s.

70 Daubeny, Charles, ‘On the diluvial theory, and on the origin of the valleys of. Auvergne’, Edinburgh new philosophical journal, x (1831), 201–29 (203).Google Scholar This was Daubeny's defence of his earlier conclusions, provoked by Lyell's use of Scrope's interpretation in the first volume of the Principles.

71 Memoir, p. 165 n.Google Scholar

72 [G. P. Scrope], ‘Art IV. [Review of] Principles of Geology … By Charles Lycll, F.R.S., 2 vols, Lond. 1830’, Quarterly review, xliii (1830), 411–69 (412–13).Google Scholar

73 Scrope, to Lyell, , 23 12 1828Google Scholar, American Philosophical Society MSS., Philadelphia.

74 MrsLyell, , op. cit. (8), i. 268–71, 276.Google Scholar

75 See, for example, White, Andrew D., A history of the warfare of science with theology in Christendom (2nd edn., New York, 1901)Google Scholar, chapter 5, ‘From Genesis to geology’. The same positivist assumptions are still apparent in more recent and more sophisticated studies: for example, Gillispie, Charles Coulston, Genesis and geology. A study in the relations of scientific thought, natural theology, and social opinion in Great Britain, 1790–1850 (Cambridge, Mass., 1951)Google Scholar, chapter 4, ‘Catastrophist geology’.

76 I borrow the expressive term ‘canopy’ from Peter L. Berger's sociological work, The social reality of religion (London, 1967).Google Scholar

77 I do not claim to have demonstrated the Unitarian character of Scrope's religious beliefs, but only that many clues in his writing suggest such an inference, which would be worth testing on further Scrope material. The vocabulary of ‘First Cause’, etc., was of course common to deists and Christians, but I see no sign in Scrope's work of any theistic concept of God as active throughout history.

78 A letter to his sister dated 4 December 1825 seems to suggest that he had only recently met Scrope; see MrsLyell, , op. cit. (8), i. 163.Google Scholar But they had been joint secretaries of the Geological Society since February 1825, and Lyell had been one of Scrope's sponsors for membership of the Society—probably though not necessarily from personal knowledge—as early as March 1824, soon after Scrope's return from the Continent (information from the Geological Society archives).

79 Memoir, pp. ixx.Google Scholar

80 Lyell, Charles, ‘On a recent formation of freshwater limestone in Forfarshire, and on some recent deposits of freshwater formations; and an appendix on the Gyroconite or seed-vessel of the Chara’, Transactions of the Geological Society of London, 2nd ser. ii, Part 1 (1828), 7296.Google Scholar The paper was read on 17 December 1824 and 7 January 1825.

81 Wilson, op. cit. (2). The judgment about originality is of course my own.

82 Lyell, , op. cit. (6), p. 439.Google Scholar

83 MrsLyell, , op. cit. (8), i. 63.Google Scholar

84 [John MacCulloch], ‘Art III. [Review of] Considerations on volcanoes … By G. Poulett Scrope, Esq., Sec. Geol. Soc. 8vo. 1825’, Westminster review, v (1826), 356–73.Google Scholar MacCulloch dismissed Scrope's book in his opening page and devoted the rest of his review to expounding his own ideas on volcanoes. For Lyell's reaction, see MrsLyell, , op. cit. (8), i. 170.Google Scholar

85 Scrope, , op. cit. (57), pp. ivv, 242Google Scholar; Lyell, , op. cit. (5), p. 518Google Scholar; op. cit. (9), iii. 2–3, 6.

86 Scrope, , op. cit. (57), p. vii.Google Scholar

87 Lyell, , op. cit. (6), p. 468.Google Scholar

88 ibid., p. 488.

89 ibid., p. 453.

90 Scrope, , op. cit. (57), pp. 1925.Google Scholar Scrope realized that dissolved volatiles, particularly water vapour, must play an important role in determining the petrological character of both intrusive and extrusive igneous rocks. Though expressed in terms of contemporary caloric theory, his suggestions are far less ‘speculative’ than Lyell's critical comments might suggest.

91 Lyell, , op. cit. (6), pp. 439Google Scholar and 440 n.

92 Bartholomew, Michael, ‘Lyell and evolution: an account of Lyell's response to the prospect of an evolutionary ancestry for man’, The British journal for the history of science, vi (19781983), 261303.Google Scholar

93 Lyell, , op. cit. (6), p. 474.Google Scholar

94 ibid., pp. 465–73.

95 ibid., pp. 472–3.

96 ibid., pp. 468–9.

97 For the working out of this reform in the Principles, see Rudwick, Martin J. S., ‘The strategy of Lyell's Principles of geology’, Isis, lxi (1970), 433.Google Scholar

98 Lyell, Charles and Murchison, Roderick Impey, ‘On the excavation of valleys, as illustrated by the volcanic rocks of central France’, Edinburgh new philosophical journal, xii (1829), 1548Google Scholar, Plates 1–3. Although nominally joint in authorship, it seems to have been mostly, if not entirely, Lyell's work. See also MrsLyell, , op. cit. (8), i. 197Google Scholar; and, for the contrast with Murchison's views, ibid., i. 199. For Scrope's further development of the same topic, see ‘On the gradual excavation of the valleys in which the Meuse, the Moselle, and some other rivers flow’, Proceedings of the Geological Society of London, i, no. 14 (1830), 170–1.Google Scholar

99 Rudwick, op. cit. (97). In the Principles Lyell changed his interpretation of the Auvergne volcanoes with an ‘extremely rash’ conjecture that even the most recent eruptions dated from the Miocene, far back in the Tertiary period. He seems to have been trying to protect still further his rejection of any diluvial interpretation of the area, in the face of Daubeny's defence: see Lyell, , op. cit. (9), iii. 268Google Scholar; also notes 41 and 70.

100 See preliminary report in Bulletin des sciences naturelles et de géologie, iii (1824), 330–1Google Scholar; de Chabriol, Dévèze and Bouillet, , Essai géologique et minéralogique sur les environs d'Issoire, Dépt, du Puy-de-Dôme, et principalement sur la montagne de Boutade avec la description et les figures lithographiées des ossemens fossiles qui y ont été recueillis (Clermont-Ferrand, 18251827)Google Scholar; Croizet, and Jobert, , Recherches sur les ossemens fossiles du département du Puy-de-Dôme (Paris, 18[26]–28).Google Scholar The sites were on Mont Perrier, above the village of Pardines and near the farm of Boutade. In modern terms the deposits are early Villefranchian (Pliocene) in age.

101 Lyell, , op. cit. (6), pp. 442–3.Google Scholar

102 Lyell, , op. cit. (98), pp. 44–5.Google Scholar

103 Rudwick, op. cit. (97).

104 MrsLyell, , op. cit. (8), i. 199, 201.Google Scholar

105 Lyell, , op. cit. (9), iii. 4561.Google Scholar The names, suggested to him by Whewell, denote ‘mostly recent [species]’, ‘few recent’, and ‘dawn of recent’; the four ‘samples’ were defined as having respectively 90–95 per cent, 35–50 per cent, c. 18 per cent, and c. 3 per cent species still extant. Lyell stated explicitly that he expected the ‘gaps’ between these would eventually be filled by new discoveries, i.e. that they were samples from a continuum and not sequential periods; see Rudwick, op. cit. (97), and The meaning of fossils. Episodes in the history of palaeontology (London, and New York, 1972), pp. 179–85Google Scholar, and, especially, Figures 4 and 5. For a modern statistician's appreciation, see SirFisher, Ronald, ‘The expansion of statistics’, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, series A, cxvi (1953), 16.Google Scholar

106 Opie, Redvers, ‘A neglected English economist: George Poulett Scrope’, Quarterly ournal of economics, xliv (1929), 101–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar This excellent article seems to have been neglected as much as its subject.

107 Scrope, G. Poulett, Principles of political economy deduced from the natural laws of social welfare and applied to the present state of Britain (London, 1833).Google Scholar

108 But compare, for example, the hostility of some Darwinian scholars towards the suggestion that Darwin's science may have been influenced substantively by the socio-political concerns of the Malthusians. For example, De Beer, Gavin, Charles Darwin. Evolution by Natural Selection (London, 1963), p. 100Google Scholar: ‘The view that Darwin was led to the idea of natural selection by the social and economic conditions of Victorian England is devoid of foundation.’ For a critique of this view, see Young, Robert M., ‘Malthus and the evolutionists: the common context of biological and social theory’. Past and present, no. 43 (1969), 109–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar; ‘Tne historiographic and ideological contexts of the nineteenth-century debate on man's place in nature’, in Teich, M. and Young, R. M. (eds.), Changing perspectives in the history of science (London, 1973), pp. 344438Google Scholar, especially section 4.

109 A parallel example is Montlosier (1755–1838), who continued an interest in geology throughout his life alongside active political involvement and historical research. As a constitutional monarchist, he entered national politics as a member of the Constituent Assembly, went into exile after the declaration of the Republic, returned to Paris under the Consulate and Empire but devoted himself to historical work; see his De la monarchie française (3 vols., Paris, 1814).Google Scholar He retired to Auvergne under the Restoration, campaigning in many publications against the growing power of clericalism (he was a strongly Gallican Catholic), and was called to the Chamber of Peers under Louis-Philippe. Bardoux, A., Le Comte de Montlosier et le Gallicanisme (Paris, 1881)Google Scholar, includes a bibliography (pp. 385–91). Montlosier's geological use of historical metaphors of monuments and medals (see note 50), although fairly commonplace in French geology in the late eighteenth century, would have had added force to him as a serious historical scholar.

110 Scrope, , op. cit. (72), p. 465.Google Scholar

111 Scrope, op. cit. (107), title and subtitle. He believed that more efficient agriculture, together with emigration to still underpopulated parts of the world, would be more than sufficient to keep food supply ahead of population growth. See, for example, the frontispiece of Political economy. In the previous year Scrope had written a strongly critical review of Thomas Chalmers's Malthusian work On political economy (Glasgow, , 1832)Google Scholar for the Quarterly review, xlviii (1832), 3969Google Scholar; see also Young, , ‘Malthus’, op. cit. (108), pp. 119–25.Google Scholar

112 See, for example, Mayr, Ernst, ‘The nature of the Darwinian revolution’, Science, clxxvi (1972), 981–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hull, David L., Darwin and his critics. The reception of Darwin's theory of evolution by the scientific community (Cambridge, Mass., 1973)Google Scholar, chapter 5

113 See Ghiselin, Michael T., The triumph of the Darwinian method (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1969)Google Scholar; Limoges, Camille, La sélection naturelle (Paris, 1970)Google Scholar; M. J. S. Hodge, ‘On the origins of Darwinism in Lyellian historical geography’, paper read at the summer meeting of the British Society for the History of Science, in Edinburgh, July 1971.

114 Lyell, , op. cit. (9), iii. 30–4Google Scholar: ‘The hypothesis of the gradual extinction of certain animals and plants, and the successive introduction of new species’ is also referred to as ‘the gradual birth and death of species’.

115 Scrope, G. Poulett, On credit currency and its superiority to coin, in support of a petition for the establishment of a cheap, safe and efficient circulating medium (London, 1830).Google Scholar This ‘pamphlet’ is in fact nearly 100 pages in length.

116 ibid., p. 52, and subtitle.

117 ibid., p. 69.

118 Scrope, , op. cit. (107), p. 407.Google Scholar