A most important step in view of future progress, at any rate in our own country, was taken by the foundation of the Geological Society of London in 1807, the members of which devoted themselves at first rather to the collection of facts than to the construction of theories, while in France the labours of Brongniart and Cuvier in comparative osteology, and of Lamarck in recent and fossil shells, smoothed the way toward the downfall of catastrophic geology. Those men, with their disciples, "raised these departments of study to a rank of which they had never before been deemed susceptible. Their investigations had eventually a powerful effect in dispelling the illusion which had long prevailed concerning the absence of analogy between the ancient and modern state of our planet. A close comparison of the recent and fossil species, and the inferences drawn in regard to their habits, accustomed the geologist to contemplate the earth as having been at successive periods the dwelling-place of animals and plants of different races--some terrestrial, and others aquatic; some fitted to live in seas, others in the waters of lakes and rivers. By the consideration of these topics the mind was slowly and insensibly withdrawn from imaginary pictures of catastrophes and chaotic confusion, such as haunted the imagination of the early cosmogonists. Numerous proofs were discovered of the tranquil deposition of sedimentary matter, and the slow development of organic life."[64] Such was the earlier history of Geology; such were the influences which had moulded its ideas till within a few years of the date when Lyell began to make it a subject of serious study. At that time, namely about the year 1820, the Geological Society of London had become the centre and meeting-point of a band of earnest and enthusiastic workers, whose names will always hold an honoured place in the annals of the Science. Among the older members--most of whom, however, were still in the prime of life, were such men as Buckland, Conybeare, Fitton, Greenough, Horner, MacCulloch, Warburton and Wollaston; among the younger, De la Beche and Scrope, Sedgwick and Whewell. Murchison, though a few years Lyell's senior, was by almost as many his junior as a geologist, for he did not join the Society till the end of 1824, and was actually admitted on the evening when Lyell, then one of its honorary secretaries, read his first paper--on the marl-lake at Kinnordy. Such men also as Babbage, Herschel, Warburton, Sir Philip Egerton, the Earl of Enniskillen (then Viscount Cole), must not be forgotten, who were either less frequent visitors or more directly devoted to other studies. At this time geology was passing into a phase which endured for some forty years--the exaltation of the palæontological, the depreciation of the mineralogical side. If it be true, as it has been more than once remarked, that the father of the geologist was a mineralogist, it is no