To Daniel Sharpe [23 January 1847]
Down Farnborough Kent
Saturday
Dear Sharpe
I am very much obliged for the M.S.1 which I return. I do not quite understand from your note, whether you have struck out all on this point in your paper, I much hope not; if you have, allow me to urge on you to append a note, briefly stating the facts, & that you omitted them in your paper from the observations not being finished.2
I am strongly tempted to suspect that the cleavage planes will be proved by you to have slided a little over each other, & to have been planes of incipient tearing to use Forbe’s expression in ice: it will in that case be beautifully analogical with my laminated lavas & these in composition are intimately connected with the metamorphic schists.—3
The beds without cleavage between those with cleavage, do not weigh quite so heavily on me, as on you— you remember, of course, Sedgwick facts of limestone4 & mine of sandstone, breaking in the line of cleavage, transversely to the planes of deposition.5 If you look at cleavage, as I do, as the result of chemical action or crystalline forces, superinduced in certain planes by their mechanical state of tension, then it is not surprising that some rocks shd yield more or less readily to the crystalline forces.6
I think I shall write to Prof. Forbes of Edinburgh, with whom I corresponded on my laminate volcanic rock, to call his early attention to your paper.7
Sincerely Yours | C. Darwin
Footnotes
Bibliography
Collected papers: The collected papers of Charles Darwin. Edited by Paul H. Barrett. 2 vols. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press. 1977.
Correspondence: The correspondence of Charles Darwin. Edited by Frederick Burkhardt et al. 29 vols to date. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1985–.
Forbes, James David. 1842. Professor Forbes’ account of his recent observations on glaciers. Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal 33: 338–52.
‘Geology of the Falkland Islands’: On the geology of the Falkland Islands. By Charles Darwin. [Read 25 March 1846.] Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London 2 (1846): 267–74. [Collected papers 1: 203–12.]
Sedgwick, Adam. 1835. Remarks on the structure of large mineral masses, and especially on the chemical changes produced in the aggregation of stratified rocks during different periods after their deposition. [Read 11 March 1835.] Transactions of the Geological Society of London 2d ser. 3: 461–86.
Sharpe, Daniel. 1849. On slaty cleavage. [Read 1 November 1848.] Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London 5: 111–29.
South America: Geological observations on South America. Being the third part of the geology of the voyage of the Beagle, under the command of Capt. FitzRoy RN, during the years 1832 to 1836. By Charles Darwin. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1846.
Volcanic islands: Geological observations on the volcanic islands, visited during the voyage of HMS Beagle, together with some brief notices on the geology of Australia and the Cape of Good Hope. Being the second part of the geology of the voyage of the Beagle, under the command of Capt. FitzRoy RN, during the years 1832 to 1836. By Charles Darwin. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1844.
Summary
Comments on manuscript [? "On slaty cleavage", J. Geol. Soc. Lond. 5 (1849): 111–29]. Discusses phenomenon of cleavage. Will write to J. D. Forbes about DS’s paper.
Letter details
- Letter no.
- DCP-LETT-1083
- From
- Charles Robert Darwin
- To
- Daniel Sharpe
- Sent from
- Down
- Source of text
- UCL Library Services, Special Collections (PEARSON/10/1)
- Physical description
- ALS 4pp & C
Please cite as
Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 1083,” accessed on 1 June 2023, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-1083.xml
Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 4
