"
On his leaving Oxford for a journey to southern Europe, Dean
Gaisford was heard to exclaim: "Well, Buckland is gone to
Italy; so, thank God, we shall have no more of this geology!"
Still there was some comfort as long as Buckland held to the
Deluge theory; but, on his surrender, the combat deepened:
instead of epigrams and caricatures came bitter attacks, and
from the pulpit and press came showers of missiles. The worst of
these were hurled at Lyell. As we have seen, he had published in
1830 his _Principles of Geology_. Nothing could have been more
cautious. It simply gave an account of the main discoveries up
to that time, drawing the necessary inferences with plain yet
convincing logic, and it remains to this day one of those works
in which the Anglo-Saxon race may most justly take pride,--one of
the land-marks in the advance of human thought.
But its tendency was inevitably at variance with the Chaldean
and other ancient myths and legends regarding the Creation and
Deluge which the Hebrews had received from the older
civilizations among their neighbours, and had incorporated into
the sacred books which they transmitted to the modern world; it
was therefore extensively "refuted.
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