y ago.

There is no antagonism whatever, and there never was, between the
belief in the views which had their chief and unwearied advocate in
Lyell and the belief in the occurrence of catastrophes. The first
edition of Lyell's "Principles," published in 1830, lies before me;
and a large part of the first volume is occupied by an account of
volcanic, seismic, and diluvial catastrophes which have occurred
within the historical period. Moreover, the author, over and over
again, expressly draws the attention of his readers to the consistency
of catastrophes with his doctrine.

Notwithstanding, therefore, that we have not witnessed
within the last three thousand years the devastation by
deluge of a large continent, yet, as we may predict the
future occurrence of such catastrophes, we are authorized to
regard them as part of the present order of nature, and they
may be introduced into geological speculations respecting
the past, provided that we do not imagine them to have been
more frequent or general than we expect them to be in time
to come (vol. i. p. 89).

Again:--

If we regard each of the causes separately, which we know to
be at present the most instrumental in remodelling the state
of the surface, we shall find that we must expect each to
be in action for thousands of years, without producing any
extensive alterations in the habitable surface, and then to
give rise, during a very brief period, to important
revolutions (vol. ii. p. 161).[22]

Lyell quarrelled with the catastrophists then, by no means because
they assumed that catastrophes occur and have occurred, but because
they had got into the habit of calling on their god Catastrophe to
help them, when they ought to have been putting their shoulders to the
wheel of observation of the present course of nature, in order to help
themselves out of their difficulties. And geological science has
become what it is, chiefly because geologists have gradually accepted
Lyell's doctrine and followed his precepts.

So far as I know anything about the matter, there is nothing that can
be called proof, that the causes of geological phenomena operated more
intensely or more rapidly, at any time between the older tertiary and
the oldest palaeozoic epochs than they have done between the older
tertiary epoch and the present day. And if that is so, uniformitarianism,
even as limited by Lyell,[23]