Charles Lyell Quotes

• Never call an accountant a credit to his profession; a good accountant is a debit to his profession.

  Charles Lyell

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• In the shallow parts of many Swiss lakes, where there is a depth of no more than from 5 to 15 feet of water, ancient wooden piles are observed at the bottom sometimes worn down to the surface of the mud, sometimes projecting slightly above it.

  Charles Lyell

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  Tags in Down, Sometimes

• So far, therefore, as we can draw safe conclusions from a single specimen, there has been no marked change of race in the human population of Switzerland during the periods above considered.

  Charles Lyell

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  Tags in Change, Human

• It has long been a fact familiar to geologists, that, both on the east and west coasts of the central part of Scotland, there are lines of raised beaches, containing marine shells of the same species as those now inhabiting the neighbouring sea.

  Charles Lyell

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  Tags in Fact, Long, Geologists

• In several sections, both natural in the banks of the Mississippi and its numerous arms, and where artificial canals had been cut, I observed erect stumps of trees, with their roots attached, buried in strata at different heights, one over the other.

  Charles Lyell

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  Tags in Different, Both

• Such discoveries have led me, and other geologists, to reconsider the evidence previously derived from caves brought forward in proof of the high antiquity of Man.

  Charles Lyell

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  Tags in Forward, Proof

• In reply, I can only plead that a discovery which seems to contradict the general tenor of previous investigations is naturally received with much hesitation.

  Charles Lyell

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  Tags in General, Hesitation, Naturally

• When on my return to England I showed the cast of the cranium to Professor Huxley, he remarked at once that it was the most ape-like skull he had ever beheld.

  Charles Lyell

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  Tags in Return, England

• That ere long, now that curiosity has been so much excited on this subject, some human remains will be detected in the older alluvium of European valleys, I confidently expect.

  Charles Lyell

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  Tags in Human, Excited

• In valley drift we meet commonly with the bones of quadrupeds which graze on plains bordering rivers.

  Charles Lyell

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  Tags in Meet, Valley

• No tools have yet been met with in any of the gravels occurring at the higher levels of the valley of the Seine; but no importance can be attached to this negative fact, as so little search has yet been made for them.

  Charles Lyell

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  Tags in Little, Negative, Importance

• I long ago suggested the hypothesis, that in the basin of the Thames there are indications of a meeting in the Pleistocene period of a northern and southern fauna.

  Charles Lyell

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Charles Lyell (12)

Birth:	14th November, 1797
Death:	22nd February, 1875
Nationality:	British
Profession:	Geologist, Lawyer

About

Charles Lyell was a British lawyer and the foremost geologist of his day. He is best known as the author of Principles of Geology, which popularised James Hutton's concepts of uniformitarianism – the idea that the Earth was shaped by the same processes still in operation today. Principles of Geology also challenged theories popularized by George Cuvier, which were the most accepted and circulated ideas about geology in England at the time. Lyell was also one of the first to believe that the world is older than 300 million years, on the basis of its geological anomalies. Lyell was a close and influential friend of Charles Darwin.

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