Charles Darwin's early interest in nature led him on a five-year voyage on which established him as an eminent geologist whose observations and theories supported Charles Lyell's uniformitarian ideas, and publication of his journal of the voyage made him famous as a popular author.

Over dinner Lyell listened eagerly to Darwin's stories ( which supported Lyell's uniformitarianism ) and introduced him to Richard Owen and William Broderip, Tories who had just been involved in voting Grant out of a position at the Zoological Society.

Darwin's spirits were again downcast when Lyell's wife died.

The theory was proposed in 1795 by James Hutton, a Scottish physician and gentleman farmer, and was later incorporated into Charles Lyell's theory of uniformitarianism.

Lyell asked Robert FitzRoy, captain of HMS Beagle, to search for erratic boulders on the survey voyage of the Beagle, and just before it set out FitzRoy gave Darwin Volume 1 of the first edition of Lyell's Principles.

" The two terms, uniformitarianism and catastrophism, were both coined by William Whewell ; in 1866 R. Grove suggested the simpler term continuity for Lyell's view, but the old terms persisted.

Today some of Lyell's mechanisms for geologic processes have been disproven, though many have stood the test of time.

The terms uniformitarianism for this idea, and catastrophism for the opposing viewpoint, were coined by William Whewell in a review of Lyell's book.

Even back in the early 18th century, Plutonists had argued for an ancient Earth, but the full impact of the depth of time involved in the Pre-Adamitic period was not commonly accepted until uniformitarianism as presented in Charles Lyell's Principles of Geology of 1830.

He saw landforms as supporting Lyell's Uniformitarianism which explained features as the outcome of a gradual process over huge periods of time, and quickly showed a gift for theorising about the geology he was examining.

Lord Lyell was ahead of the others by quite a bit and destroyed the machine-gun gun crew by grenade, and three of Lord Lyell's party became casualties, while the lance-corporal gave covering fire for Lord Lyell.

Sensitive to Lyell's fears on this, Darwin responded that " I think I shall avoid the whole subject, as so surrounded with prejudices, though I fully admit that it is the highest & most interesting problem for the naturalist ".

To supervise his collections Darwin had to return to London, and on Lyell's advice he planned to arrive on Friday 3 March 1837, in time for one of Charles Babbage's Saturday parties, talking shops about the latest developments " brilliantly attended by fashionable ladies, as well as literary and scientific gents " and " a good mixture of pretty women ", bankers and politicians, where Babbage promoted such projects as his mechanical computer.

Lyell's presentation and endorsement of the new evidence for human antiquity firmly established the theory as scientific orthodoxy.

Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man brought together Lyell's views on three key themes from the geology of the Quaternary Period of Earth history: glaciers, evolution, and the age of the human race.

The book was widely regarded as a disappointment because of Lyell's equivocal treatment of evolution.

Darwin studied evolution in the context of Charles Lyell's geology, but our present understanding of Earth history includes some critical advances made during the last half-century.

Charles Darwin was a follower of Lyell's theory of uniformitarianism and decided to expand upon Lyell ’ s theory with a quantitative estimate to determine if there was enough time in the history of the earth to uphold his principles of evolution.

As a young naturalist and geological theorist, Darwin studied the successive volumes of Lyell's book exhaustively during the Beagle survey voyage in the 1830s, before beginning to theorise about evolution.

In 1863 Lyell's Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man popularised prehistory, though his caution on evolution disappointed Darwin.

Lyell's father, also named Charles, was a lawyer and botanist of minor repute: it was he who first exposed his son to the study of nature.

Lyell's wife died in 1873, and two years later Lyell himself died as he was revising the twelfth edition of Principles.

Principles of Geology, Lyell's first book, was also his most famous, most influential, and most important.

Lyell's interpretation of geologic change as the steady accumulation of minute changes over enormously long spans of time was a powerful influence on the young Charles Darwin.

In geology Darwin was very much Lyell's disciple, and brought back observations and his own original theorising, including ideas about the formation of atolls, which supported Lyell's uniformitarianism.

The work's subtitle was " An attempt to explain the former changes of the Earth's surface by reference to causes now in operation ", and this explains Lyell's impact on science.

Lyell's most important specific work was in the field of stratigraphy.

Charles Darwin was influenced by Lyell's Principles of Geology, which explained both uniformitarian methodology and theory.

Over time there was a convergence in views, but Lyell's description of the development of geological ideas led to wide belief that uniformitarianism had triumphed.

Uniformitarianism was formulated by Scottish naturalists in the late 18th century, starting with the work of the geologist James Hutton, which was refined by John Playfair and popularised by Charles Lyell's Principles of Geology in 1830.

From 1830 to 1833 Charles Lyell's multi-volume Principles of Geology was published.

: Gould simplified the issue, noting that Lyell's " uniformity of process " was also an assumption: " As such, it is another a priori methodological assumption shared by all scientists and not a statement about the empirical world.

( This was written in a reference to Charles Lyell's ideas of " centres of creation ".

Lyell's assessment was uncritically followed until the mid-twentieth century, and enlarged upon by G. B.

The book was inspired by Charles Lyell's Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man of 1863 ( and probably also influenced by Lyell's earlier ground-breaking work " Principles Of Geology ", published 1830 – 33 ).

Lyell's vivid writing fired the public imagination, inspiring Jules Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth and Louis Figuier's 1867 second edition of La Terre avant le déluge (" Earth before the Flood "), which included dramatic illustrations of savage men and women wearing animal skins and wielding stone axes, in place of the Garden of Eden shown in the 1863 edition.

Lyell's book also influenced Louis Figuier's 1867 second edition of La Terre avant le déluge which included dramatic illustrations of savage men and women wearing animal skins and wielding stone axes, in place of the Garden of Eden shown in the 1863 edition.

Influenced by Charles Lyell's Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man of 1863, the 1867 second edition of La Terre avant le déluge abandoned the Garden of Eden shown in the first edition, and included dramatic illustrations of savage men and women wearing animal skins and wielding stone axes.

* Charles Lyell's Principles of Geology, or the Modern Changes of the Earth and its Inhabitants, Considered as Illustrative of Geology

As quoted from Charles Lyell's Principles of Geology:

He read Charles Lyell's Principles of Geology and from the first stop ashore, at St. Jago, found Lyell's uniformitarianism a key to the geological history of landscapes.

Darwin borrowed Charles Lyell's argument in Principles of Geology that the record is extremely imperfect as fossilisation is a very rare occurrence, spread over vast periods of time ; since few areas had been geologically explored, there could only be fragmentary knowledge of geological formations, and fossil collections were very poor.

Intrigued by the ideas of gradual formation of landscapes set out in Charles Lyell's Principles of Geology, he wrote to Lyell on 20 February 1836 praising the book as a work which would bring " a complete revolution in subject, by altering entirely the point of view in which it must thenceforward be contemplated.

Herbivore is the anglicized form of a modern Latin coinage, herbivora, cited in Charles Lyell's 1830 Principles of Geology.

As quoted from Charles Lyell's Principles of Geology:

Fallopio argued against Fracastoro's theory of fossils, as described as follows in Charles Lyell's Principles of Geology:

Before they left England FitzRoy gave Darwin a copy of the first volume of Charles Lyell's Principles of Geology, a book the captain had read that explained terrestrial features as the outcome of a gradual process taking place over extremely long periods.

Frontispiece of Lyell's Principles of Geology

As quoted from Charles Lyell's Principles of Geology:

Before they left England FitzRoy gave Darwin a copy of the first volume of Charles Lyell's Principles of Geology, the subject which would be his primary work.

Influenced by Charles Lyell's Principles of Geology, he became an able geologist as well as collecting plant and animal specimens, and fossils of gigantic extinct mammals.

Charles Lyell's Principles of Geology states that in 1596,