18461878] MISCELLANEOUS 225 



To C. Lyell. Letter 559 



Down, July 3rd [1849]. 



I don't know when I have read a book l so interesting ; some 

 of your stones are very rich. You ought to be made Minister 

 of Public Education not but what I should think even 

 that beneath the author of the old Principles. Your book 

 must, I should think, do a great deal of good and set people 

 thinking. I quite agree with the Athenaeum* that you have 

 shown how a man of science can bring his powers of 

 observation to social subjects. You have made H. Wedgwood, 

 heart and soul, an American ; he wishes the States would 

 annex us, and was all day marvelling how anyone who could 

 pay his passage money was so foolish as to remain here. 



To C. Lyell. Letter 560 



Down, [Dec., 1849]. 



In this letter Darwin criticises Dana's statements in his volume on 

 Geology, forming Vol. X. of the Wilkes Exploring Expedition, 1849. 



. . . Dana is dreadfully hypothetical in many parts, and 

 often as " d d cocked sure " as Macaulay. He writes however 

 so lucidly that he is very persuasive. I am more struck with 

 his remarks on denudation than you seem to be. I came to 

 exactly the same conclusion in Tahiti, that the wonderful 

 valleys there (on the opposite extreme of the scale of wonder 



Botany Bunbury published numerous contributions on palseobotanical 

 subjects, a science with which his name will always be associated as one 

 of those who materially assisted in raising the study of Fossil Plants to 

 a higher scientific level. His papers on fossil plants were published in the 

 Journal of the Geological Society between 1846 and 1861, and shortly 

 before his death a collection of botanical observations made in South 

 Africa and South America was issued in book form in a volume entitled 

 Botanical Fragments (London, 1883). Bunbury was elected into the 

 Royal Society in 1851, and from 1847 to 1853 he acted as Foreign 

 Secretary to the Geological Society. Life, Letters, and Journals of 

 Sir Charles J. F. Bunbury, Bart., edited by his wife Frances Joanna 

 Bunbury, and privately printed. (Undated.) 



1 A Second Visit to the United States of North America. 2 vols., 

 London, 1849. 



2 " Sir Charles Lyell, besides the feelings of a gentleman, seems to 

 carry with him the best habits of scientific observation into other strata 

 than those of clay, into other ' formations ' than those of rock or river- 

 margin." The Athen&um, June 23rd, 1849, p. 640. 



VOL. II. 15 



