18411882] ICE-ACTION 155 



certainly have been left. I suggested a careful consideration Letter 503 

 of mountainous tropical countries such as Brazil, peninsula of 

 India, etc. ; if lakes are there, [they are] very rare. I should 

 fully subscribe to Ramsay's views. 



What presumption, as it seems to me, in the Council of 

 Geological Society that it hesitated to publish the paper. 



We return home on the 3Oth. I have made up [my] mind, 

 if I can keep up my courage, to start on the Saturday for 

 Cambridge, and stay the last few days of the [British] 

 Association there. I do so hope that you may be there then. 



To J. D. Hooker. Letter 504 



Nov. 3rd [1864]. 



When I wrote to you I had not read Ramsay. 1 How 

 capitally it is written ! It seems that there is nothing for 

 style like a man's dander being put up. I think I agree 

 largely with you about denudation but the rocky-lake-basin 

 theory is the part which interests me at present. It seems 

 impossible to know how much to attribute to ice, running 

 water, and sea. I did not suppose that Ramsay would deny 

 that mountains had been thrown up irregularly, and that the 

 depressions would become valleys. The grandest valleys 

 I ever saw were at Tahiti, and here I do not believe ice 

 has done anything ; anyhow there were no erratics. I said 

 in my v$. American Geology 2 that rivers deepen and the sea 

 widens valleys, and I am inclined largely to stick to this, 

 adding ice to water. I am sorry to hear that Tyndall has 

 grown dogmatic. H. Wedgwood 3 was saying the other day 

 that T.'s writings and speaking gave him the idea of intense 

 conceit. I hope it is not so, for he is a grand man of science. 



. . .1 have had a prospectus and letter from Andrew 

 Murray 4 asking me for suggestions. I think this almost shows 



1 " On the Erosion of Valleys and Lakes : a Reply to Sir Roderick 

 Murchison's Anniversary Address to the Geographical Society." Phil. 

 Mag., Vol. XXVIII., p. 293, 1864. 



2 " Finally, the conclusion at which I have arrived with respect to the 

 relative powers of rain and sea-water on the land is, that the latter is by 

 far the most efficient agent, and that its chief tendency is to widen the 

 valleys, whilst torrents and rivers tend to deepen them and to remove the 

 wreck of the sea's destroying action" (Geol. Observations, pp. 66, 67). 



3 Hensleigh Wedgwood, brother-in-law to Charles Darwin. 



4 See Vol. II., Letters 379, 384, etc. 



