Principles of Geology (Penguin Classics)

Very good and precise information about the history of geology. Would recommend to any geology or science fan.

A real discovery. Lyell writes with great clarity and not a little wit. His demolition of the theories of some of his predecessors is done with style. He sustains his argument throughout, but although this was a start of the art scientific treatise it is a pleasure to read. This is an abridgment and the editor has done an excellent job in producing a manageable version.

Christmas present.

Classic book on geology! Grear service!

It was on reading Darwin's  The Voyage of the Beagle  that I became aware of Charles Lyell. Darwin went to the trouble (in the 1830's) of having the volumes of this work sent out to him in South America as they appeared. His importance was hammered home when Darwin in  The Origin Of Species , could only advance his ideas thanks to Charles Lyell's insights.In this volume we are treated to Lyell's razor-sharp intellect cutting through prevailing humbug to construct an amazingly accurate picture of the history of the earth's crust. Above all he challenged (with all due respect) religious orthodoxy of a Creation in recent times.Lyell also takes up and successively demolishes many of the erroneous, flabby-thinking, and sometimes cranky theories put forward by various researchers in the field.Lyell's argument for the immense antiquity of the earth is persuasive and provided the foundation for Darwin's argument for evolution, which required immense periods of time to work.He points out how, as rocks get more ancient, so the proportion of extinct marine creatures increases. This was the second insight to inspire Darwin: that in the history of the earth, most species that have ever lived have become extinct. Lyell struggled with the notion that species could die off and others "be called into existence", yet he had the courage to follow his logic to the correct conclusion. He even said that: "In the universal struggle for existence, the right of the strongest eventually prevails...", a phrase that Darwin picks up and paraphrases 20 years later in his Origin of Species.Lyell successfully argues the amazing idea that some rocks now found at the tops of mountains were originally laid down in the oceans. He works out how, through analysis of earthquakes and volcanoes, how this could have happened. The Lisbon earthquake showed how land could sink too - 600 feet below the waves. Of course he had no idea of the help given by plate tectonics - a notion that took another 130 years to be evidenced let alone accepted.This edition is in fact an abridged version of the original. However, by cutting out heavily detailed supporting evidence which, in today's world we do not need to convince us, is a boon for the general reader. The editor puts in an explanation of what he has cut out in the appropriate point in the text.Lyell writes with erudite elegance and illustrates his points with quotations from the classics. He expected the reader of the time to know them but our editor here has helpfully supplied the citations. All the way Lyell anticipates objections to his theories and carefully and accountably meets them and disposes of them. In this, Lyell shows the way for Darwin to do the same thing in the Origin 25 years later. Today we are taken aback by some of the prejudices he has to dispel. For example the prevailing belief in Noah's flood and the believers' obsessive searching for proof of it in the geological record. Lyell firmly (and courageously) says that there is no evidence for the Biblical Flood.As a nutritional anthropologist and writer  Deadly Harvest  I was enthralled by this extraordinary tour de force: I just wish my publisher would allow me to write like that today!