Quote#Politics & Power
I endeavoured to sketch out (and it was, I believe, the first…
Quote byCharles Lyell · 1797–1875
Commonly attributed — not confirmed in an authoritative edition. Cited on Wikiquote to: The Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man (1863), Ch.20, p. 393.
English (original)
I endeavoured to sketch out (and it was, I believe, the first systematic attempt to accomplish such a task) the laws which govern the extinction of species, with a view of showing that the slow, but ceaseless variations, now in progress in physical geography, together with the migration of plants and animals into new regions, must, in the course of ages
— Charles Lyell
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the extension of the sea had been greater at some former periods
Pallas, in more recent times, has drawn the same inference.
The first who endeavored to draw a clear line of demarcation between these distinct departments, was Hutton, who declared that geology was in no ways concerned with 'questions as to the origin of things.
in the form of the coasts of Asia, and
important changes had taken place
This doctrine, it is true, had been laid down in terms almost equally explicit by Strabo, to explain the occurrence of fossil shells in the interior of continents, and to that geographer, and other writers of antiquity, Hooke frequently …