From Charles Lyell 30 November 1860
Summary
Satisfied that CD finds his conjectured rate of elevation and long periods of stasis reasonable, even if these periods cannot be estimated. Explaining upheaval by subterranean lava flow makes these pauses plausible. Suspects that mountainous areas move more than lowland and coastal areas. General upheavals or subsidence in Europe in glacial period are unlikely. Believes with Jamieson that there was glacial action in Scotland before its submergence and that it was equally mountainous then. Subterranean upheaval visits different countries by turn. Horizontal Silurian strata must have been submerged and upheaved. Rest has always been the general surface character. Believes, however, that the quantity of late Tertiary movement is against CD’s belief in the constancy of continents and oceans: perhaps since the Miocene period, but not since the Cretaceous.
Author: | Charles Lyell, 1st baronet |
Addressee: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Date: | 30 Nov 1860 |
Classmark: | The University of Edinburgh Centre for Research Collections (Lyell collection Coll-203/A3/7: 49–57) |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-3001A |
From Charles Lyell 4 August 1867
Summary
Comments on proof-sheets of Variation.
His revisions of Principles of geology, 10th ed.
Author: | Charles Lyell, 1st baronet |
Addressee: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Date: | 4 Aug 1867 |
Classmark: | K. M. Lyell ed. 1881, 2: 415–16 |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-5595 |
From Charles Lyell 2 May 1860
Summary
It is small comfort to be told you will be succeeded in lineal descent by angels when Lamarck and Darwin have made your ancestors without souls. However, can the progressive system not be seen as most consonant with a higher destiny if all spiritual natures advance? The link of common descent to inferior beings like idiots should be obvious. Infants die before they become responsible. Pope’s An essay on Man [1733] shows how man was "In doubt to deem himself a God or Beast", without speculation on his genealogy.
Author: | Charles Lyell, 1st baronet |
Addressee: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Date: | 2 May 1860 |
Classmark: | The University of Edinburgh Centre for Research Collections (Lyell collection Coll-203/A3/5: 176–9) |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-2779A |
Matches: 1 hit
- … Lyell’s scientific journal. The entry is headed with the date and ‘Perfectibility | Letter of C. L. to Darwin’. It is printed in Wilson ed. 1970, pp. 382–3. Pope 1733–4 , Epistle II: 31–4: Superior Beings, when of late they saw A mortal Man unfold all Nature’s Law, Admir’d such Wisdom in an earthy Shape, And show’d a Newton as we show an Ape See letter to Charles …
From Charles Lyell [after 2 August 1845]
Summary
CD’s criticism of his book [Travels in North America (1845)].
Compares invertebrate animals of Tasmania and England.
Mentions views of C. J. F. Bunbury on climate of the Carboniferous period.
Robert Brown says Australian flora has the widest range.
Author: | Charles Lyell, 1st baronet |
Addressee: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Date: | [after 2 Aug 1845] |
Classmark: | DAR 205.3: 281 |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-901 |
From J. D. Hooker and Charles Lyell to the Linnean Society 30 June 1858
Summary
Communicate papers by CD and A. R. Wallace on "The Laws which affect the Production of Varieties, Races, and Species". Explain that CD and Wallace have, independently and unknown to each other, arrived at the same theory to account for the appearance and perpetuation of specific forms, and that neither has yet published, although CD first sketched his theory in 1839. Give their reasons for arranging the joint presentation.
Author: | Joseph Dalton Hooker; Charles Lyell, 1st baronet |
Addressee: | Linnean Society |
Date: | 30 June 1858 |
Classmark: | Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society (Zoology) 3 (1859): 45–6 |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-2299 |
Matches: 2 hits
- … forth, that he proposed, in a letter to Sir Charles Lyell, to obtain Mr. Wallace’s consent …
- … Charles Lyell. The first Part is devoted to “The Variation of Organic Beings under Domestication and in their Natural State;” and the second chapter of that Part, from which we propose to read to the Society the extracts referred to, is headed, “On the Variation of Organic Beings in a state of Nature; on the Natural Means of Selection; on the Comparison of Domestic Races and true Species. ” 2. An abstract of a private letter …
letter | (45) |
Lyell, Charles | |
Hooker, J. D. | (1) |
Darwin, C. R. | (42) |
Hooker, J. D. | (1) |
Huxley, T. H. | (1) |
Linnean Society | (1) |
Lyell, Charles | (45) |
Darwin, C. R. | (42) |
Hooker, J. D. | (2) |
Huxley, T. H. | (1) |
Linnean Society | (1) |
Darwin in Conversation exhibition
Summary
Meet Charles Darwin as you have never met him before. Come to our exhibition at Cambridge University Library, running from 9 July to 3 December 2022, and discover a fascinating series of interwoven conversations with Darwin's many hundreds of…
Matches: 1 hits
- … 9 July – 3 December 2022 Milstein Exhibition Centre, Cambridge University …