Darwin Correspondence Project

vast that a variety of phases may have occurred in climate— Heer & Gaudin with their leaves & plants in modern travertines will I expect clear up the point in time.

Auguste Bravard has sent me in a lithographed letter an astounding list of new mammalia found by him in Buenos Ayres, Bahia Blanca & Paran`a—basin of Plata—Pampas &c— He says (& he is generally right) he has found 56 species, raising the number from 10 to 66    Three new species of Scelidotherium, one Megalonix    Two new Mylodons five new Glyptodons, about as many of Dasypus    Five new pachyderms of new genera— Several new felidæ, canidæ   New ruminants Camelotherium & Cervus besides rodents &c—

All the above post- or newer-pliocene but there are also some upper Miocene [whale], & what is surely a very grand discovery among the Eocene mammalia Anoplotherium americanum Brav—& Paleotherium Paranense Brav—both from Paran`a. Is not the occurrence of Paris Gypsum Upper Eocene European forms quite new? Then he has with the above an Eocene Palæophis which I think is the genus of Owen's Sheppey Sea-serpent.— On referring to Morris` catalogue I see it also ascends to middle Eocene in Hants—two species—   But Bravard is not such good authority for reptiles. How much more significant such facts are if one can once feel sure of transmutation—& hereditary descent.

I have had a good half hour's argument with the Bp of Oxford, Wilberforce, he maintaining that your book ``was the most unphilosophical he had ever read''. Of course he seized on the most vulnerable points with no small skill, as if ``all having come from one egg'' was the Keystone of your theory!—   Bell did the same in argument— Some day I will tell you all about the fight—   If he reviews you I think I shall recognize his hand. Have you seen the attack in Annals & Mag. Nat. Hist. Febry 1860 (v. 5. No. 26)

Surely it must be Lowe or Wollaston—some one who knows Madeira p. 141. probably the Revd—for tho' T. V. W. is very orthodox I do not think he would experience such a ``cold shudder''—   It is written by one who personally has a liking for you I should think—on the whole ably done—   But if it be Low he has only put one side of the (Madeira?) land-shell question for out of his sub-species of certain polymorphic species in each island I cd. raise a good argument to meet the equally striking persistency of the majority of species from a remote post- or newer-pliocene epoch— I speak of course of the land shells—   It is strange when each rock & island has an insular variety of certain species that others remain so entirely unchanged from the fossil period—   Still on the whole the Madeira evidence cuts as much or more your way as the opposite.

Have you read Wallace in the last Linn. Socy Proceedings.

If Madeira was joined to the main land & Porto Santo I cannot understand how the land shells of the two can be so very dissimilar & also so peculiar & unlike the continental species. What a deal Wallace gives one to think of—   He gains with some by stating his antitype theory because he makes that a law at any rate & so the anti-