Summary

Has read TFJ’s letter on Glen Roy. His arguments seem conclusive. CD gives up the ghost. "My paper is one long gigantic blunder." How rash it is "to argue that because a case is not one thing it must be some second thing which happens to be known to the writer".

Summary

Will forward TFJ’s letter to Charles Lyell.

Gives up the marine theory [of the parallel roads of Glen Roy] for ‘ever & ever’, but ‘with a groan’.

Summary

CD expresses his high opinion of TFJ’s scientific qualifications for lecturing on agriculture.

Summary

Impressed with TFJ’s Glen Roy paper.

TFJ has treated CD’s errors very gently.

Summary

Will look for botanical specimens CD requested.

Tells of a kestrel with a broken leg which apparently was forced to change its diet to worms and snails because of the injury.

Summary

Observations from a fortnight in Lochaber. Found the entrance to Loch Treig to present the clearest evidence of intense glacial action. States, in contradiction of David Milne-Home, that there is glacial scoring in Glen Spean, as Louis Agassiz described, and moraine around the mouth of Loch Treig. There is little sign of water erosion on the rocks crossed by the lines in Glen Roy. Believes the smoothed rocks at the eastern end of Loch Laggan are due to flow from the lake and not tidal action. The lines in Glen Roy are too neat for a lake shore subject to tides. Given the glacial scoring sweeping round from Glen Spean into Glen Treig, and all the boulders, TFJ is astonished that anyone could deny that there had been glaciers there. [See 3247.]

Summary

Discusses his observations at Glen Roy. Mentions glaciers seen by Hooker in the Himalayas. Discusses problems of glacier–lake theory.

Summary

Writes with an important fact about the parallel roads of Glen Roy. The watershed at Makoul corresponds with the lowermost of the Glen Roy lines. Over a stretch of 20 miles from east to west the lowermost of the Glen Roy lines is near parallel with the present sea level.

Summary

Grateful for CD’s commendation of his Glen Roy paper ["Parallel roads of Glen Roy", Q. J. Geol. Soc. Lond. 19 (1863): 235–59].

Reading Justus Liebig [trans. William Gregory, Animal chemistry or organic chemistry (1842)] has suggested that pattern of evolutionary succession might depend on differential need for soil minerals.

Summary

Sends his paper ["On the glacial phenomena of Caithness", Q. J. Geol. Soc. Lond. 22 (1866): 261–81], which shows glaciation under marine conditions in Scotland.