Sir Charles Lyell
Lyell reviews the use of “Liverpool coal” and anthracite coal in Boston and New York, and discusses the canal system in Pennsylvania for shipping coal. He states that “From living always in hotels I know well of the price of anthracite & coal in America” and he further states that in “Pittsburg”[sic] and Ohio it is “wonderfull cheap” [sic]. Best known for the publication of Principles of Geology (1830) and Elements of Geology (1838), Lyell and his wife traveled in the United States and gave the Lowell lectures in Boston. As a result of his conversance with the fossil record, he struggled with the problem of human evolution and urged Darwin, whom he knew personally, to publish his theories in 1856. Darwin did so in The Origin of the Species (1859); Lyell publicly endorsed his theories of evolution in his tenth edition of Principles (1867). Lyell was President of the Royal Geological Society of London, and a Friend of the Royal Society.
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