Enhance Your Quote Experience
Enjoy ad-free browsing, unlimited collections, and advanced search features with Premium.
I endeavoured to sketch out (and it was, I believe, the first systematic attempt to accomplish such a task) the laws which govern the extinction of s… - Charles Lyell
" "I endeavoured to sketch out (and it was, I believe, the first systematic attempt to accomplish such a task) the laws which govern the extinction of species, with a view of showing that the slow, but ceaseless variations, now in progress in physical geography, together with the migration of plants and animals into new regions, must, in the course of ages, give rise to the occasional loss of some of them, and eventually cause an entire fauna and flora to die out; also, that we must infer, from geological data, that the places thus left vacant from time to time, are filled up without delay by new forms, adapted to new conditions, sometimes by immigration from adjoining provinces, sometimes by new creations. Among the many causes of extinction enumerated by me, were the power of hostile species, diminution of food, mutations in climate, the conversion of land into sea, and of sea into land, &c.
English
Collect this quote
About Charles Lyell
Sir Charles Lyell, 1st Baronet (14 November 1797 – 22 February 1875) was the foremost geologist of his day. He is best known as the author of Principles of Geology, which popularized James Hutton's concepts of uniformitarianism. Lyell was a close and influential friend of Charles Darwin.
Also Known As
Alternative Names:
Sir Charles Lyell, 1st Baronet
•
Sir Charles Lyell of Kinnordy, 1st and last Bt.
•
Sir Charles Lyell
Related quotes. More quotes will automatically load as you scroll down, or you can use the load more buttons.
Additional quotes by Charles Lyell
One extraordinary fiction of the Egyptian mythology was the supposed intervention of a masculo-feminine principle, to which was assigned the development of the embryo world, somewhat in the way of incubation. For the doctrine was, that when the first chaotic mass had been produced, in the form of an egg, by a self-dependent and eternal Being, it required the mysterious functions of this masculo-feminine demi-urgus to reduce the component elements into organized forms.
By the multiplying of slight modifications in the course of thousands of generations, and by the handing down of the newly-acquired peculiarities by inheritance, a greater and greater divergence from the original standard is supposed to be effected, until what may be called a new species, or, in a greater lapse of time, a new genus, will be the result.
PREMIUM FEATURE
Advanced Search Filters
Filter search results by source, date, and more with our premium search tools.
The era, it is true, of the expected millennium had passed away; and for five hundred years after the fatal hour, when the annihilation of the planet had been looked for, the monks remained in undisturbed enjoyment of rich grants of land bequeathed to them by pious donors, who, in the preamble of deeds beginning 'appropinquante mundi termino'-'appropinquante magno judicii die,' left lasting monuments of the popular delusion.
Loading...