My dear Sir

I am sorry to say that I do not return home till middle of next week, & as I order no pamphlets to be forwarded to me by post, I cannot return the Geolog. Mag. until my return home.—¹ Nor could my servants pick it out of the multitude which come by the Post. As I remarked in a letter to a friend, with whom I was discussing Wallace’s last book, the subject to which you refer seems to me a most perplexing one.² The fact which I pointed out many years ago that all Oceanic isl^ds are volcanic (except St. Paul’s, & now this is viewed by some as the nucleus of an ancient volcano) seems to me a strong argument that no continent ever occupied the great oceans.— Then there comes the statement from the Challenger that all sediment is deposited within 1 or 200 miles from the shores; though I sh^d. have thought this rather doubtful with respect to great rivers like the Amazons.—³

The Chalk formerly seemed to me best case of an Ocean having extended where a continent now stands, but it seems that some good judges deny that the chalk is an oceanic deposit.⁴ On the whole I lean to the side that continents have since Cambrian times occupied, approximately, their present positions.⁵ But as I have said the question seems a difficult one, & the more it is discussed the better.

Believe me | My dear Sir | Yours faithfully | Ch. Darwin

P.S. I have been compelled to write this note in haste—