Charles Lyell Autographed Letter Signed.

LYELL, Charles.

$2,000.00

Item Number: 67029

Autographed Signed Letter from Charles Lyell, the father of modern geology. It reads, ” Wed. Nov. 24, 1869 Sir James Colvile, I have just heard from our friend Dr. Hooker that you wish to meet me tomorrow (Thursday Nov. 25th) at the Athenaeum in the afternoon. I will be there at 1/2 past 3 ockl. P.M. & tell the porter where I am to be found. Most truly yours Charles Lyell.” In near fine condition. Double matted and framed opposite a photograph of Lyell. The entire piece measures 14 inches by 17 inches.

Sir Charles Lyell was a Scottish geologist who popularized the revolutionary work of James Hutton. He is best known as the author of Principles of Geology, which presented uniformitarianism–the idea that the Earth was shaped by the same scientific processes still in operation today–to the broad general public. Principles of Geology also challenged theories popularized by Georges Cuvier, which were the most accepted and circulated ideas about geology in Europe at the time. His scientific contributions included an explanation of earthquakes, the theory of gradual "backed up-building" of volcanoes, and in stratigraphy the division of the Tertiary period into the Pliocene, Miocene, and Eocene. He also coined the currently-used names for geological eras, Palaeozoic, Mesozoic and Cenozoic. He incorrectly conjectured that icebergs may be the emphasis behind the transport of glacial erratics, and that silty loess deposits might have settled out of flood waters. Lyell, following deistic traditions, favored an indefinitely long age for the earth, despite geological evidence suggesting an old but finite age. He was a close friend of Charles Darwin, and contributed significantly to Darwin's thinking on the processes involved in evolution. He helped to arrange the simultaneous publication in 1858 of papers by Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace on natural selection, despite his personal religious qualms about the theory. He later published evidence from geology of the time man had existed on Earth.