LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Charles Lyell: Oxford University
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Charles Lyell's father was an active naturalist, and Lyell had access to an elaborate library which included works on geology. Whilst at Oxford University he attended lectures by William Buckland, professor of geology, that triggered his enthusiasm for the subject. He became more and more interested in the subject and made many geological tours with his family in England and Scotland in
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"Catastrophism," as this school of thought came to be known, was attacked in 1830 by a British lawyer-turned-geologist named Charles Lyell (1797-1875). Lyell started his career studying under the catastrophist William Buckland at Oxford. But Lyell became disenchanted with Buckland when Buckland tried to link catastrophism to the Bible, looking for evidence that the most recent catastrophe had actually been Noah's flood. Lyell wanted to find a way to make geology a true science of its own, built on observation and not susceptible to wild speculations or dependent on the supernatural.
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Although Roger Haydon's compilation, Upstate Travels: British Views of Nineteenth-Century New York (Syracuse University Press, 1982) includes a variety of accounts, it largely omits the one written by the geologist Charles Lyell, who visited here in 1841. Rather than seeking comprehensive coverage (which would not have been possible, given the large number of travel books published at the time), the editor favored those less familiar and less accessible than Lyell's Travels in North America (1845). But with September 1991 marking the 150th anniversary of Lyell's trip across Steuben County, his observations may appropriately be excerpted here.
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