Picked this up in Irving Stone's bio novel about Charles Darwin, The Origin. Hutton published his book in 1795. Apparently he wasn't that great a writer so his revolutionary conclusions that the earth was a heck of a lot older that the accepted version didn't get a lot of notice. It was a generation later when Charles Lyell, apparently a better writer, picked up the flag when he published Principles of Geology. And got a taste of what Darwin went through a quarter century later.
Hutton and Lyell both saw the earth as developing slowing over millions of years as sediments were laid down and mountains rose carrying their ancient passengers with them. To this day you can find the fossils of ammonites on top of the ridges in the Himalayas. It took Lyell some time to digest Darwin's work but he revised the original Principles to reflect the new theories.
I finally realized what ticks me off about the Creationist/(un) Intelligent Design crew. They drain all the magic and wonder out of Creation. It's almost as if the mystery scares the living daylights out of them. Instead of accepting the immensity and trying to grow to match the beauty, they attempt to shrink it down to a size they can accept. And not only insist that the rest of us go along but can get down right rude and insulting when we don't want to join them in their sand box. No thanks, your playpen is too damn small.
Creator, singer, harpist, dancer: however the immensity of Creation was accomplished it is a wondrous, fantastic gift that we can barely understand because we can perceive such a tiny piece of it. That's the magic and we have eternity, one way or another to work it out.
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Oh, and that's a shot of Everest I lifted from my copy of Encyclopedia Britannica. Fantastic shot.
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