>  >  Now, imagine how those who read Darwin or Lyell must have reacted after a
>>   lifetime of assuming that the earth was 6000 years old. Some wrested
>>   themselves away from an older way of thinking, others did not. To
>>some, like
>>   Huxley, Darwin's book came as a revelation.
>
>Actually, quite a few people before them, including some
>malacological names such as Cuvier, Lamarck, and William Smith,
>thought the earth was quite old.  Although there were a few
>reactionaries, in general old-earth views met with little difficulty
>in the 1600's to 1800's.
>The distinct faunas of fossil mollusks in different layers were
>important to Lyell and his predecessors in recognizing evidence for
>a long sequence of events in earth history.



The concept of evolution predated Darwin.  Darwin was simply the
person who provided a plausible explanation of it's mechanism.

We should note that the full title of Darwin's book was:

"On The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection,
                                               or
  The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life"

--
Ed Foster
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