going out to India in the E.I.C.² auspices to do magnetism.) he³ writes in great force, & asks about tints upon snow. he had not received my book yet. I understand he is very wroth at the Quarterly Review Article upon Cosmos. ⁴

With regard to your question anent tertiaries & glacial actions. My own old moraines I conceived to be geologically very modern indeed, & to be a recession of Ice now & still progressing either from diminished fall of rain, altered temperature, or sinking of the mountain chain &c.

I often looked towards the bases of glaciers & on the moraines &c for old tree stumps, Juniper stumps &c. but never found any trace of them. The general appearance was of vegetation crawling up—i.e. following the receding glaciers.

As to the Tertiaries of West Tibet: there are very modern Lymnæas &c imbedded in a fine silt—& overlain by glacial detritus— Thomas’s⁵ idea is, that as the Himal: were elevated the valleys, from being fiords, &c, became chains of Lakes &c, which gradually drained as they were raised to the regions of Ice & that the glacial period of the Himalaya was the most recent of any. I think he mentions however the interstratification of glacial matter & this tertiary fossiliferous clay in certain localities.

As to the Sewalik fossils hills⁶ I conceive them to be comparatively very ancient indeed & that they were raised in their present form as part & parcel of the Himalaya from which they are not physically & geographically distinct

By the way before I forget it Brown⁷ shewed me some very curious views of the Chilean Cordillera published I think in the Vienna Acad Transactions⁸ which reminded me much of your descriptions of Andes of the colored rocks, Skies & great plain of Plata. &c.⁹

As to vegetation of Sikkim lower Himal it was certainly uncommonly fine after the plains of India;¹⁰ but not comparable with Brazil or Khasia or Chittagong. The more I read & travel the more impressed I am with the fact that our impressions are more the effects of association than ever, & that it requires