万物简史 第75期:敲石头的人们(7)

The members met twice a month from Novemberuntil June, when virtually all of them went off tospend the summer doing fieldwork. These weren'tpeople with a pecuniary interest in minerals, youunderstand, or even academics for the most part,but simply gentlemen with the wealth and time toindulge a hobby at a more or less professionallevel. By 1830, there were 745 of them, and theworld would never see the like again.

从11月到次年6月，会员每月碰头两次，因为到这个时候，实际上所有的人都已出门，整个夏天在做野外工作。你要知道，这些人出去找矿石不是为了挣钱，在大多数情况下甚至也不是学者。它不过是既有钱又有时间的绅士在不大专业的层面上从事的一种爱好。到1830年，已经发展到745名会员，世界上再也不会出现那种情况。

It is hard to imagine now, but geology excited the nineteenth century—positively gripped it—ina way that no science ever had before or would again. In 1839, when Roderick Murchisonpublished The Silurian System, a plump and ponderous study of a type of rock calledgreywacke, it was an instant bestseller, racing through four editions, even though it cost eightguineas a copy and was, in true Huttonian style, unreadable. (As even a Murchison supporterconceded, it had "a total want of literary attractiveness.") And when, in 1841, the greatCharles Lyell traveled to America to give a series of lectures in Boston, sellout audiences ofthree thousand at a time packed into the Lowell Institute to hear his tranquilizing descriptionsof marine zeolites and seismic perturbations in Campania.

这种情形在现在是难以想像的，但地质学激活了19世纪的人--完全抓住了他们的注意力--这是任何科学以前没有过，或许将来也不会有的情况。1839年，罗德里克·默奇森出版了《志留纪体系》，一本又厚又重的书，研究一种名叫杂砂岩的岩石。它顿时成为一本畅销书，很快出了4版，虽然一册要卖到8个几尼，而且具有真正的赫顿风格，即毫无可读性。(连默奇森的支持者也承认，它"毫无文学作品的魅力"。)而当伟大的查尔斯·莱尔于1841年去美国，在波士顿开设一系列讲座的时候，每次都有3000名听众挤进洛韦尔学院，静静地听他描述海洋沸石和地震在坎帕尼亚引起的震动。