Item 115 - Letter from Charles Lyell

CL intends to launch 'the 300 pages which you have' ['Principles of Geology', volume 2, 1832] next week. Murray [John Murray - publisher] will see Lockhart [John Gibson Lockhart] to secure a place in the next number of the Q. R. for WW's review of his work. CL has 'tried to leave the reader in suspense about the whole theory of successive creation...I think it will relieve you of one great difficulty to say that as the question of 'whether organic beings have come in gradually, or by batches', is completely one to be decided in geological evidence it is premature to discuss it...I wish to keep back the theory which I believe to flow irresistibly from the facts now established by the succession of species in the fossils of the tertiary strata'.