Charles Lyell and Modern Geology. By Professor T. G. Bonney.
(Cassell and Co.)—Profossor Bonney brings rare qualifications to the performance of his task. He has a thorough acquaintance with his subject, and he has literary skill of no common order. Lyell had a long and prosperous life. Circumstances favoured him. His course was made easy. His merit was that he worked as if the strongest compulsion had been upon him. His occupa- tion was nominally the law, and he seems to have had at one time a little practice. But ho was not under the necessity of earning his bread, and he gave up to science, which was not likely to repay, and did not repay, his labours in gold, the great powers of his mind. In 1831 he may be said to have formally abandoned the law by accepting the Professorship of Geology in King's College, London, then newly established. Lyell had already propounded theories which startled the orthodox, and this appointment is not without its significance. It was a liberal and courageous act on the part of the Council, and, perhaps, may be set off against other acts of that body which have been neither the one nor the other. The character and value of Lyell's eon-
tribntions to geology we cannot discuss. Professor Bonney sets them forth, doing justice at the same time to other workers in the field.
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