Summary

Outlines address to York BAAS meeting on history of geographical distribution. Organising theme: advancement in this science based on ideas enunciated by scientific voyagers. Asks CD’s advice.

Summary

Has finished ACR’s article ["The old glaciers of Switzerland and N. Wales" in Peaks, passes, and glaciers, ed. J. Ball (1859)]. Asks the authority for glacial drifts in Siberia. Wishes ACR would examine the Glen Roy parallel roads and settle the problem.

Asks if it is certain that traces of organic remains have been found in Long Mynd beds.

Summary

Replies at length to JDH’s worried reaction to his comments on lowness of Australian plants. CD distinguishes between "competitive highness", i.e., which fauna would be exterminated and which survive if two faunas were placed in competition, and ordinary "highness" of classification.

Summary

Satisfied that CD finds his conjectured rate of elevation and long periods of stasis reasonable, even if these periods cannot be estimated. Explaining upheaval by subterranean lava flow makes these pauses plausible. Suspects that mountainous areas move more than lowland and coastal areas. General upheavals or subsidence in Europe in glacial period are unlikely. Believes with Jamieson that there was glacial action in Scotland before its submergence and that it was equally mountainous then. Subterranean upheaval visits different countries by turn. Horizontal Silurian strata must have been submerged and upheaved. Rest has always been the general surface character. Believes, however, that the quantity of late Tertiary movement is against CD’s belief in the constancy of continents and oceans: perhaps since the Miocene period, but not since the Cretaceous.

Summary

JL’s address [Presidential Address, 31 Aug 1881, Rep. BAAS (1881): 1–51] has made him think about important steps in advancing geology. Lists major advances in his lifetime.

Summary

CD’s views, on which he has lectured, will succeed with time.

Joachim Barrande’s refutation cannot be impartial because he is a devout Catholic.

Many young French naturalists support CD but are silent for fear of their jobs. Houget has been reprimanded for his Darwinism.

Summary

Responds to CD’s queries about the thickness of various geological formations. [See Origin, p. 284.]

Summary

Are the animal and vegetable kingdoms so united as to be indistinguishable?

Summary

Sends new publication [see 11838].

Plans major study of evolutionary palaeontology.

Comments on form series discovered by Joachim Barrande.

Has not heard from Leopold Würtenberger.

Summary

Encloses reviews by Asa Gray and Bronn. Comments on Bronn review. Mentions review by Wollaston.

Comments on paper by W. H. Harvey in Gardeners’ Chronicle [(1860): 145–6]. Discusses Harvey’s belief in the permanence of monsters.

Discusses CL’s objection that still-living primitive forms failed to develop.

The survival of Lepidosiren and other primitive types of fish and mammals.

Summary

Encloses letter from J. D. Hooker. Glad he will soon be home.

Everyone will be astonished at oaks and birches of tropics.

Summary

R. I. Murchison has criticised ACR’s glacial lake theory in his Presidential Address to Royal Geographical Society [J. R. Geogr. Soc. 34 (1864): cix–cxcii].

ACR has finished his Geology of N. Wales.

Summary

Instances of sexual differences in viviparous fishes, suggested by reading chapters on sexual selection [in Descent] and by Mivart’s Genesis of species.

Notes on echinoderms.

Summary

His fossil bones are unpacked and some are great treasures. He has some geology to do: R. I. Murchison has lent him a map and asked him to look at a part of the country he has been describing.

Their only protection against having Harriet Martineau as sister-in-law is that she works Erasmus too hard.

Summary

CD forgets an author [CD himself in Coral reefs] "who, by means of atolls, contrived to submerge archipelagoes (or continents?), the mountains of which must originally have differed from each other in height 8,000 (or 10,000?) feet".

CL begins to think that all continents and oceans are chiefly post-Eocene, but he admits that it is questionable how far one is at liberty to call up continents "to convey a Helix from the United States to Europe in Miocene or Pliocene periods".

Will CD explain why the land and marine shells of Porto Santo and Madeira differ while the plants so nearly agree?

Summary

Cannot come to Down to meet B. J. Sulivan as W. H. Harvey is calling.

Plant distribution and soil nature.

Forbes’s modification of Watson’s types of vegetation.

JDH will write comparison of representative plant species of the N. and S. Hemispheres.

Summary

ACVDdO asks CD to assist him in finding correspondents willing to provide British fossil shells for his proposed work, Paléontologie universelle, in exchange for parts of ACVDdO’s palaeontological works.

Summary

Spoke to Henry Warburton, W. H. Fitton, and E. B. Greenough on CD’s idea of a Government grant for publication [not identified].

Will read at next meeting his paper on erect Nova Scotia fossil trees [Proc. Geol. Soc. Lond. 4 (1843–5): 176–8].

E. P. Halstead reports on shores rising off Burma and Bay of Bengal.

Unpacking his U. S. fossils.

Phillips looked at beds below coal in Pennsylvania. Result is the usual different species found but with complete representation of forms.

Summary

Answers a number of queries from Lyell concerning geography and geology of Chiloé Island and its relationship to the Cordilleras.

Asks about "perched rocks" on Jura and notes their relevance to Louis Agassiz’s theory. Discusses Agassiz’s view on Jura.

Mentions seeing Robert Brown.

Notes R. I. Murchison’s discovery of shells in central England.

Weakness of negative evidence.

Summary

Comments on EM’s work in Dolomites [Die Dolomit-Riffe von Südtirol (1879)]. Had wondered whether ancient corals formed reefs.

Obliged for EM’s photograph. Sends his own.