From Thomas Belt 20 January 1877
Cornwall House Ealing
Jany 20 1877
Dear Mr Darwin,
I feel greatly obliged to you for your kind and frank letter which has so effectually dispelled a pleasant illusion that already I begin to wonder that I should have occupied myself with it.1 It may not however be entirely fruitless Dr Hooker advises me to make an application for aid to work out the glaciation of the area between the Pyrenees and the Alps—that is—what traces of ice are there that would have blocked up the Rhone drainage?—2 This I could do without giving up my profession—
I can assure you that it is a great wrench to my whole habit of mind to make an application at all but I must either give up, (if I can) some of my scientific work or try to make it remunerative
Please thank Mr George Darwin for the copy of his paper on “the Earth’s Axis of Rotation” I am sorry he cannot get a change of the obliquity of the ecliptic as the discovery of Miocene plants & trees apparently all round the present pole and to within about ten degrees of it is even more puzzling than the glacial period and a change in the obliquity seemed to offer a solution—3
Thanking you again for your kindness | I am Dear Sir | Yours very truly | Thomas Belt
Footnotes
Summary
Thanks for CD’s frank criticism of his views.
Hooker advises him to apply for aid to work out glaciation between Pyrenees and Alps.
Letter details
- Letter no.
- DCP-LETT-10806
- From
- Thomas Belt
- To
- Charles Robert Darwin
- Sent from
- Ealing
- Source of text
- DAR 160: 131
- Physical description
- ALS 3pp
Please cite as
Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 10806,” accessed on 23 April 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-10806.xml