xcursions
for geological study. They both returned again and again to the
continent for the purpose of geological research, and in the year 1825,
at the age of 28, found themselves associated as joint-secretaries of
the Geological Society. By this time they had arrived at similar
convictions concerning the causes of geological phenomena--convictions
which were in direct opposition to the views of their early teachers,
and equally obnoxious to all the leaders of geological thought in the
infant society which they had joined.

[Illustration: G Poulett Scrope]

It is interesting to note that each of these two young geologists
arrived independently, _as the result of their own studies and
observations_, at their conclusions concerning the futility of the
prevailing catastrophic doctrines. This I am able to affirm, not only
from their published and unpublished letters, but from frequent
conversations I had with them in their later years.

Scrope, who was slightly the elder of the two friends, spent a
considerable time in that wonderful district of France--the Auvergne--in
the year 1821, and though he had not seen the map and later memoirs of
Desmarest, he pourtrayed the structure of the country in a series of
very striking panoramic views, and was led, independently of the great
French observer, to the same conclusions as his concerning the volcanic
origin of the basalts and the formation of the valleys by river-action.
Scrope was at that time equally ignorant of the views propounded both by
Generelli and by Hutton.

By April 6th, 1822, Scrope had completed his masterly work _The Geology
and Extinct Volcanoes of Central France_, and had despatched it to
England. It would be idle to speculate now as to what might have been
the effect of that work--so full of the results of accurate observation,
and so suggestive in its reasoning--had it been published at that time.
It is quite possible that much of the credit now justly assigned to
Lyell, would have belonged to his friend. Unfortunately, however,
Scrope, instead of seeing his work through the press, determined first
to make another tour in Italy. He arrived at Naples just in time to
witness and describe the grandest eruption of Vesuvius in modern times,
that of October 1822. What he witnessed then--the blowing away of the
whole upper part of the mountain and the formation of a vast crater 1000
feet deep--made a profound impression on Scrope's mind. His interest
thus stro