After visiting the south of France with Murchison, Lyell prepared to cross the Alps and to see Vesuvius, he being impressed with the necessity of studying that grand modern example in order to understand, perfectly, the extinct volcanoes they had been studying in the Auvergne. He wrote his father—“I scarcely despair now, so much do these evidences of modern action increase upon us as we go south (towards the more recent volcanic seat of action) of proving the positive identity of the causes now operating with those of former times.” This was always his point, and it certainly was not Murchison’s. When at Vesuvius, Lyell recognized the similarity of some very old volcanic dykes of Scotland with those recently exposed in the old crater. Etna was visited, and he was delighted at finding sea-shells, resembling those now living on the floor of the Mediterranean close by, some three hundred feet above sea level. Whilst at Naples, and in the midst of the highly suggestive scenery of the beautiful neighbourhood, Lyell wrote to Murchison a very characteristic letter, which should be well pondered over even by wealthy men who enter into the studies of nature, and which might be read with benefit by those people who on this not over civilized earth, hold the purse-strings of the world and treat scientific teachers with gross meanness. With all his advantages Lyell could not undertake the research which made him famous, which has tended to elevate our conception of the laws of nature, and which has done so much to lead geologists along the right path, without caring much for pecuniary matters.