My dear M^r Darwin.

I have been away from home for a few days and only received your letter late last night.¹

I am writing to thank you very much for the references you have kindly sent me and unless you object I should like in the next letter to Nature to refer to your having previously suggested the corresponding elevation of continents & sinking of the larger oceans.² The most valuable facts about South America which we owe to you I have in great part abstracted and hope to print them in a paper on the Elevation of the Southern Circumpolar region for the Geographical Society³

The conclusion to which I have come that volcanoes are not found in areas of upheaval, may I think be reconciled with your conclusion previously unknown to me that they are absent from areas of subsidence by an alternative which I meant to state if I did not namely that they are found along the boundary lines between rising and sinking land and perhaps are the vent holes along the fissures by which the heat generated by contraction escapes. I was much startled by a paper in the Philosophical Magazine of last year proving that a contraction of the diameter of the sun to the extent of about 172 feet annually would suffice to produce the terrific heat evolved by it.⁴ To this I shall refer at greater length in Nature. The most curious part of generalization I arrived at if it be proved by subsequent experiments to be right is that the focus of elevation is in the polar regions and gradually diminishes towards the Equator coinciding with the focus of magnetic intensity but I am most unreasonably boring you with my crudities   it is perhaps natural that a young scholar who owes more than he can tell to your writings should presume somewhat upon your forbearance when he is honoured by becoming your correspondent. I was very sorry to hear from Dawkins⁵ that you were an invalid. I hope that the cheerful weather we have had lately will have reached you & benefited you. Here we live in a kind of Bastion exiled from the centres of science and art, but we have a few good men, some of whom you will know Roscoe Binny⁶ and others. Binny told me a curious fact yesterday namely that a long time before the trees in Lancashire die, (you are aware that trees are disappearing most rapidly from the South of the County) they become barren. Oaks beeches etc have ceased for many years to bear fruit in places where swine were formerly fattened on acorns & beech must. This has a curious connection surely with the growing barrenness of the New Zealand women on which I have a very interesting government report.⁷ and of a similar barrenness in the Sandwich islands.⁸ and this seems at issue with the mass of facts that prove that dying trees and sickening animals are most fruitful.

I hope at any time that you will make any use of me you can down here. & that you will not fail to let me know if you should ever come within reach of Manchester.

The only book you refer to that I have not seen is one on the geological formation of small islands, I should feel obliged for its full title & will then get it.⁹ With all the good wishes of the season and many apologies for trespassing so much on your time | I remain | Yours very respectfully | Henry H. Howorth

C Darwin E^sq. F.R.S