Charles Lyell, Historian of Time's Cycle - Time's Arrow, Time's Cycle: Myth and Metaphor in the Discovery of Geological Time - page 102

saur in the sea, while the pterodactyle might flit again through umbrageous
groves of tree-ferns. (1830, 123)
Surely, De la Beche had drawn his future Professor Ichthyosaurus to mock
this peculiar reverie. In support of this interpretation, De la Beche dated his
lithograph in the lower-right-hand corner as 1830, year of publication for
volume I of Lyell's Principles.
Martin Rudwick (1975) has since proven that Lyell, not Buckland, was the
target of De la Beche's sketch. First, De la Beche did not draw the figure for
Buckland, but distributed copies quite widely among his friends. More
important, and conclusively, Rudwick discovered a series of satirical
sketches and caricatures drawn by De la Beche in the back of a field
notebook compiled during 1830 and 1831. Lyell, generally depicted as a vain
theoretician in his barrister's wig, and contrasted with an honest field
geologist in working clothes, is the butt of this series. The last sketch is a trial
run for the final product. It depicts Professor Ichthyosaurus, the human skull,
and one attentive student below, all placed in the same positions occupied in
the later lithograph. Any lingering doubts about the identification with Lyell
are dispersed by De la Beche's caption to the trial run: "Return of
Ichthyosauri etc. 'Principles etc.'" The entire series, Rudwick infers,
represents De la Beche's several attempts to create a caricature for his
unhappiness with Lyell's thoughts and methods; Professor Ichthyosaurus
finally satisfied him. 2
While we rejoice in the solution to a small puzzle about a famous illustration
in the history of geology, the identification of De la Beche's Professor
Ichthyosaurus with Charles Lyell underscores an important paradox in the
traditional reading of Lyell's role in the history of geology. The Lyell of
textbook epitomes is, after all, the
2. Ironically, the evidence that initially persuaded me to identify Professor
Ichthyosaurus with Lyell—the stated date of 1830—is incorrect. Rudwick shows
that De la Beche made the sketch in 1831, then misremembered later when he
transferred it to Solnhofen stone for lithography. Since De la Beche knew that he
was satirizing a statement in Lyell's 1830 book, his error does become evidence of a
different sort for the identification with Lyell.