less true that his mother was a palæontologist; but at this particular epoch the paternal influence obviously declined, while that of the mother became inordinately strong. Wollaston and MacCulloch, indeed, were geologists of the old school; excellent mineralogists and petrologists (to use the more modern term) as accurate as it was possible to be with the appliances at their disposal, but among the younger men De la Beche, accompanied to a certain extent by Scrope and Sedgwick, was almost alone in following their lead. But although palæontology and stratigraphical geology as its associate were clearly making progress, the school of thought, of which Lyell became the champion, counted at this time but few adherents, for the older geologists were almost to a man "catastrophists." A few, like MacCulloch, undervalued palæontological research, and thus were doubly prejudiced against the uniformitarian views. Buckland, Conybeare, Greenough, as we have already seen from incidental remarks in Lyell's letters, had put their trust in deluges, and imagined that by such an agency the earth had been prepared for a new creation of living things and a new group of geological formations. Sedgwick even was to a great extent on their side. He had speedily emerged from the waters of Wernerism, in which at first he had been for a short time immersed, but he did not escape so easily from the roaring floods of diluvialists, and the grandeur of catastrophic changes in the crust of the earth fascinated his enthusiastic, almost poetic, nature. Even so late as 1830, we find him criticising from the chair of the Geological Society the leading argument of Lyell's "Principles of Geology" in no friendly spirit, and bestowing high praise on Elie de Beaumont's theory of Parallel Mountain-chains.