por primera vez los "Arrecifes de coral"; cómo vio que los hechos se ordenaban en sus respectivos lugares, sin ignorar ni pasar por alto ninguno; y cómo, paso a paso, se le guiaba hacia la gran conclusión de una amplia subsidencia oceánica. Jamás se ha dado al mundo un ejemplo más admirable de método científico, y, aunque no hubiera escrito nada más, este solo tratado habría situado a Darwin a la vanguardia absoluta de los investigadores de la naturaleza».
Es interesante ver en el siguiente extracto de una de las cartas de Lyell (A Sir John Herschel, 24 de mayo de 1837. «Life of Sir Charles Lyell», vol. II, pág. 12) con qué entusiasmo y prontitud abrazó la teoría. El extracto también da incidentalmente alguna idea de la teoría misma.
"I am very full of Darwin's new theory of Coral Islands, and have urged Whewell to make him read it at our next meeting. I must give up my volcanic crater theory for ever, though it cost me a pang at first, for it accounted for so much, the annular form, the central lagoon, the sudden rising of an isolated mountain in a deep sea; all went so well with the notion of submerged, crateriform, and conical volcanoes,... and then the fact that in the South Pacific we had scarcely any rocks in the regions of coral islands, save two kinds, coral limestone and volcanic! Yet spite of all this, the whole theory is knocked on the head, and the annular shape and central lagoon have nothing to do with volcanoes, nor even with a crateriform bottom. Perhaps Darwin told you when at the Cape what he considers the true cause? Let any mountain be submerged gradually, and coral grow in the sea in which it is sinking, and there will be a ring of coral, and finally only a lagoon in the centre. Why? For the same reason that a barrier reef of coral grows along certain coasts: Australia, etc. Coral islands are the last efforts of drowning continents to lift their heads above water. Regions of elevation and subsidence in the ocean may be traced by the state of the coral reefs." There is little to be said as to published contemporary criticism. The book was not reviewed in the 'Quarterly