version of the New Testament by Ulphilas, which appeared at Oxford in 1750, preceded by a grammar of the Gothic language. His last great labour was the compilation of a comprehensive dictionary of the Anglo-Saxon and Gothic languages. This work he lived to complete, but not to publish; it was in the printer's hands when he died in 1767, leaving it to the care of his friend, Owen Manning, who brought it out in 1772, in two folio volumes, with grammars of both languages and other matter.—B. H. C.
LYELL, Charles, of Kinnordy in Forfarshire, a Scottish botanist, was born on 7th March, 1767, and died on the 8th of November, 1849. He was educated first at St. Andrews and then at Cambridge. He resided for many years in England, where he cultivated botany and made a collection of British plants. He also studied the mediæval literature of Italy, and published several editions of Dante's lyrical poems with English translations. He was vice-lieutenant of the county of Forfar, and a fellow of the Linnæan Society. A genus of mosses was named after him by Brown. His eldest son is the distinguished geologist Sir Charles Lyell.—J. H. B.
* LYELL, Sir Charles, son of the preceding, was born at Kinnordy in the county of Forfar, Scotland, in 1797. He received his early education at Midhurst in Sussex, and afterwards entered Exeter college, Oxford, where he took his degree of M.A. in 1821. Agreeably to the wishes of his parents, he studied law, and in due time was called to the bar. He practised his profession for a short time; but finding legal studies dry and uninteresting, and not having any necessity for following out a profession, he soon abandoned it for a more congenial pursuit. While at Oxford he had the advantage of attending the lectures of the celebrated geologist, Professor Buckland, and to the study of geology he now turned with the greatest ardour. To extend his knowledge in this department of science he travelled during the year 1824, and again in 1828-31, over the greater part of the continent of Europe, and made himself personally acquainted with the most prominent points of the geology of the regions he visited. After his return from his first excursion, a number of papers in the Transactions of the Geological Society of London, Brewster's Edinburgh Journal, and the Quarterly Review, attest the zeal with which he had prosecuted his favourite science, and announced in the young writer powers of observation and comparison of a high order. In 1830 he published the first volume of his great work, the "Principles of Geology," which was amazingly well received by the public, and this was followed in the succeeding year by a second volume. His reputation as a scientific geologist was now established, and in 1832, at the opening of King's college, London, he was appointed professor of geology in that establishment. This post, however, he very soon relinquished, though without in any degree abandoning his scientific investigations. The third volume of his "Principles" appeared in 1833; but such an impression had this work produced upon the public mind, that a second edition of the two first volumes was called for before the third and concluding volume was printed. In 1834 a third edition was published, and the work extended to four volumes; and in 1840 it was translated into French by Madame Tullia Meulian, under the immediate superintendence of U. Arago. A fourth edition in 1835 was quickly succeeded in 1837 by a fifth, which contained numerous alterations and additions. This work was divided into two parts, which, as materials accumulated and rendered new editions necessary, the author was induced to separate and publish as two distinct works; the one retaining the name of the "Principles of Geology," and containing a view of the modern changes pf the earth and its inhabitants; the other, taking the title of the "Elements of Geology," and relating to the monuments of ancient changes. The former has now gone through ten editions, and the latter, after going through two editions, has been recast and enlarged, and entitled the "Manual of Elementary Geology." Of the scope and bearing of these two works, which have more than any other influenced the progress and development of geological science, and which he is particularly anxious should not be confounded with each other, the author himself thus speaks—"The 'Principles' treat of such portions of the economy of existing nature, animate and inanimate, as are illustrative of geology, so as to comprise an investigation of the permanent effects of causes now in action, which may serve as records to after ages of the present condition of the globe and its inhabitants. Such effects are the enduring monuments of the ever varying state of the physical geography of the globe—the lasting signs of its destruction and renovation, and the monuments of the equally fluctuating condition of the organic world. They may be regarded as symbolical language, in which the earth's autobiography is written. In the 'Manual of Elementary Geology,' on the other hand, I have treated briefly of the component materials of the earth's crust, their arrangement and relative position, and their organic contents, which, when deciphered by aid of the key supplied by the study of the modern changes above alluded to, reveal to us the annals of a grand succession of past events—a series of revolutions which the solid exterior of the globe and its living inhabitants have experienced in times antecedent to the creation of man." The main object of the "Principles" is to show "that the past changes of the earth's surface result from causes now in operation," and has received the appellation of metamorphism, or gradual transformation. This theory, when first broached, met with great opposition from many conscientious men, who imagined that it interfered with the authoritative declarations of scripture, and who appealed from human observation to infallible authority. It led to considerable controversy, but it has gained ground, and men like Hugh Miller have been won over to its side, and have striven, not without effect, to reconcile the doctrine with the Mosaic account of the creation. Of the theory of the "Progressive development of organic life," Lyell is a consistent opponent. It has often been maintained that the various forms of animals and plants which inhabit or have inhabited the earth are modifications of one common form, and that the more complicated have grown out of, or been developed from, the simpler forms of animal and vegetable life. Lamarck and Oken, amongst the more modern writers on the continent, and the author of the Vestiges of Creation, and, still more recently, Mr. Darwin in this country, maintain this view. Lyell not only combats this theory, but contends that the exploration of the various strata of the earth have not furnished proof that the inferior animals appeared only at the commencement of creation; but that, on the contrary, we actually find vertebrated animals and plants of the most perfect organization in strata of very high antiquity. Since the first edition of the "Principles" was published, reptiles have been found in the lower silurian in Canada, in the old red sandstone of Morayshire, in the devonian of Scotland, and in the lower carboniferous rocks of the United States of North America; whilst mammalia have been discovered in the bone breccia of Würtemberg, between the lias and the keuper; gasteropodous molluscs in the chalk of Denmark and France, and dicotyledonous plants in the lower cretaceous strata. The only fact which can, he thinks, be alleged in favour of the hypothesis of development, is the tardy appearance of man upon the globe. In 1851 he thus briefly sums up in regard to this question:—"I shall conclude by observing, that if the doctrine of successive development had been palæontologically true, as the new discoveries above enumerated show that it is not; if the sponge, the cephalopod, the fish, the reptile, the bird, and the mammifer had followed each other in regular chronological order, the creation of each class being separated from the other by vast intervals of time; and if it were admitted that man was created last of all, still we should by no means be able to recognize in his entrance upon the earth, the last term of one and the same series of progressive developments. For the superiority of man, as compared to the irrational mammalia, is one of kind—rather than of degree—consisting in a rational and moral nature, with an intellect capable of indefinite progression, and not in the perfection of his physical organization or those instincts in which he resembles the brutes. He may be considered as a link in the same unbroken chain of being, if we regard him simply as a new species—a member of the animal kingdom—subject, like other species, to certain fixed and invariable laws, and adapted like them to the state of the animate and inanimate world prevailing at the time of his creation. Physically considered, he may form part of an indefinite series of terrestrial changes past, present, and to come; but morally and intellectually, he may belong to another system of things—of things immaterial—a system which is not permitted to interrupt or disturb the course of the material world, or the laws which govern its changes." In addition to his scientific travels and geological explorations in various parts of continental Europe, Sir Charles Lyell has twice visited North America. His first journey was to the Northern States, Canada, and Nova Scotia, during which his attention was particularly devoted to
