My dear Sir,—

I have read your paper¹ with the greatest pleasure, and should like to point out several passages which require explanation, and must have a word or two altered, but it would be impossible in a letter. I have made notes on them, and hope you will call here before you read the paper. Will you come up on Monday, January 2, and come and dine with us at half-past five o’clock, or come at five, and I will go over the paper before dinner? No one dines with us but Mr. and Mrs. Horner and one daughter, and Mr. Horner will be glad to renew his acquaintance with you.²

We dine early, because we have one of our small early tea parties, and one or two are to be here, to whom I should like to introduce you, besides a few whom you know already. If you cannot get here to dinner, you must if possible join the evening party.

The idea of the Pampas going up, at the rate of an inch in a century, while the Western Coast and Andes rise many feet and unequally, has long been a dream of mine.³ What a splendid field you have to write upon!

I have spent the last week entirely in comparing recent shells with fossil Eocene species, identified by Deshayes.⁴ When some great principle is at stake, all the dryness of minute specific comparisons vanishes, but I heartily long for some one here with a collection of shells, and leisure to talk on these matters with. Lonsdale is overpowered with work. Don’t accept any official scientific place, if you can avoid it, and tell no one that I gave you this advice, as they would all cry out against me as the preacher of anti-patriotic principles. I fought against the calamity of being President⁵ as long as I could. All has gone on smoothly, and it has not cost me more time than I anticipated; but my question is, whether the time annihilated by learned bodies (‘par les affaires administratives’) is balanced by any good they do. Fancy exchanging Herschel at the Cape, for Herschel as President of the Royal Society, which he so narrowly escaped being,⁶ and I voting for him too! I hope to be forgiven for that.⁷ At least, work as I did, exclusively for yourself and for science for many years, and do not prematurely incur the honour or penalty of official dignities. There are people who may be profitably employed in such duties, because they would not work if not so engaged.

Whenever you come up, you must be here on Wednesday, and if you like to dine at the club do so.⁸ There is no vacancy, but you stand the first of those who are knocking at the door for admission.

Yours very truly, | Charles Lyell.