1.) I think Charles Lyell contributed most to Darwin's theory of natural selection.
2.) Charles Lyell was a geologist that helped cement the idea of uniformitarianism. Uniformitarianism is the theory that the earths features, such as mountains, volcanoes, rivers and so on, are a result of a long term process of earthquakes, erosion, wind flooding and more that happened in the past and continue to happen today that shape our landscape. This opposed the idea of catastrophism that suggested that earths landscape was created with huge events that destroyed and shaped the world. What Lyell argued was that insignificant changes happened over time creating a deep change in the landscape over decades.
http://all-geo.org/highlyallochthonous/2009/02/darwin-deep-time-and-evolution/
page 30 and 31 of the anthropology textbook
3.) The bullet point I think Lyell's theory goes with most is Individuals do not evolve. Populations do. This shows that over time small changes are happening over the landscape that do not effect it until over long periods of time. Evolution happens between generations just like the landscape it dose not have noticeable change within one generation.
4.) I do not think Darwin could have came up with natural selection with out Lyell's Theory. This Theory is one of the main points that led Darwin to Natural Selection. The process and time it takes for it to occur. Lyell theory helped shaped Darwin's by realizing the the time and generation gaps that occur.
5.) The attitude of the church affected Darwin and his book Origin of Species by slowing down his the process. Because Darwin grew up and knew very influential people he was afraid to tell anyone of his findings. It took him an extra 22 years to publish his book making sure he had enough evidence to back up his theory. This probably made the book and his research much more detailed.
