The study of existing nature and its changes undertaken in order to comprehend the past changes during geological ages—The uniformity of natural operations under law—Catastrophes abolished—The succession of life on the globe, and that of the tertiary ages explained—The antiquity of man and of the great ice age considered. Charles Lyell was born in Forfarshire, at Kinnordy, on November 14th, 1797. His father was an able, wealthy, well-educated gentleman; and his mother, a Yorkshire lady, had the usual good sound sense of the women of that county. He was the eldest of ten children, the whole of whom grew up; and he, as is commonly the case in large families, was a good son and brother, and a most independent man in mind and action. Charles Lyell’s family resided, for years, in the south of England after his birth, and the boy was sent to school early; and in his amusing history of his schoolboy days, which is given in the “Life of Sir Charles Lyell,” edited by his sister-in-law, Mrs. Lyell, he went through all the fun and trouble, the games by day and the bolsterings by night, the keeping of pets, and the petty warfares of the English schoolboy. When eleven years of age, Lyell got into indifferent health at school after measles, and this necessitated his being less pressed at his lessons. He was fond of study, however, and this enforced idleness made him take to some of his father’s amusements, that of entomology. Young Lyell studied butterflies, and chased them in the fields and woodlands of the New Forest in Hampshire. He soon began to study the changes of form which insects undergo in their short lives, and to watch, hour after hour, the habits of the water-beetles and other aquatic insects. After spoiling a considerable number of hats in chasing butterflies, Lyell was supplied with a net and a cabinet in which to place his stores of insect wealth. Oddly enough, some of the varieties of the butterflies which young Lyell collected were of use in after years to Curtis the entomologist. The boy had no companions in these “un-English” amusements, and was very grateful for the assistance of his father’s head servant, who knew a few plants by sight, and helped his young master. “Instead of sympathy,” wrote Lyell, “I received from almost every one beyond my home, either ridicule, or hints that the pursuits of other boys were more manly. Whether did I fancy that insects had no feeling? What could be the use of them? The contemptuous appellation of ‘butterfly hunting’ applied to my favourite employment always nettled me.” However, Lyell persisted, and when he got back to school he used to work at his favourite subject out of school hours.