Page:Charles Darwin as a Geologist - 1909.djvu/12

 2 review of his relations to the history of intellectual development may be called for. Nevertheless, I venture to think that there is one branch of his scientific labours, the value and significance of which have scarcely perhaps received the notice and appreciation to which they are entitled. It is apt to be forgotten that Darwin began his active scientific career as a geologist, that it was mainly to geological problems that the earlier years of his life were devoted, and that it was in no small measure from the side of geology that he was led into those evolutional studies which have given him so just a title to our admiration and gratitude, and have placed him so high among the immortals. I have therefore decided to ask your attention to-day to an outline of what he accomplished in geology, and of the relation of his studies in that science to the great problems of evolution with which his. name is indissolubly associated.

In Darwin's younger days geology had hardly as yet completely vindicated for itself