Charles Lyell's argument in this classic volume is that the processes of nature are slow and uniform, and that the Earth is in consequence hundreds of millions of years old. This work includes his prediction that if our nearest relatives are great apes, then the places to look for human fossils will be central Africa and Indonesia.

By 1863 Charles Lyell was one of the most eminent of British men of science. Born in Scotland in 1797, he had studied classics at Exeter College, Oxford but had also attended William Buckland’s lectures on geology.