146 GEOLOGY [CHAP. IX 



Letter 496 not thus marked with a red line are worth translation you 

 will have to decide. I think much more highly of my book 

 on Volcanic Islands since Mr. Judd, by far the best judge on 

 the subject in England, has, as I hear, learnt much from it. 



I think the short paper on the " formation of mould" is 

 worth translating, though, if I have time and strength, I hope 

 to write another and longer paper on the subject. 



I can assure you that the idea of any one translating my 

 books better than you never even momentarily crossed my 

 mind. I am glad that you can give a fairly good account of 

 your health, or at least that it is not worse. 



Letter 497 To T. Mellard Reade. 



London, Dec. 9th, 1880. 



I am sorry to say that I do not return home till the middle 

 of next week, and as I order no pamphlets to be forwarded to 

 me by post, I cannot return the Geolog. Mag. 1 until my return 

 home, nor could my servants pick it out of the multitude 

 which come by the post. 



As I remarked in a letter to a friend, with whom I was 

 discussing Wallace's last book, 2 the subject to which you 

 refer seems to me a most perplexing one. The fact which 

 I pointed out many years ago, that all oceanic islands are 

 volcanic (except St. Paul's, and now this is viewed by some 

 as the nucleus of an ancient volcano), seems to me a strong 

 argument that no continent ever occupied the great oceans. 3 

 Then there comes the statement from the CJiallenger that all 

 sediment is deposited within one or two hundred miles from 

 the shores, though I should have thought this rather doubtful 

 with respect to great rivers like the Amazons. 



The chalk formerly seemed to me the best case of an 

 ocean having extended where a continent now stands ; but it 

 seems that some good judges deny that the chalk is an oceanic 



1 Article on " Oceanic Islands," by T. Mellard Reade, Geol. Mag., 

 Vol. VIII., p. 75, 1881. 



2 Wallace's Island Life, 1880. 



3 " During my investigations on coral reefs I had occasion to consult 

 the works of many voyagers, and I was invariably struck with the fact 

 that, with rare exceptions, the innumerable islands scattered through the 

 Pacific, Indian, and Atlantic Oceans were composed either of volcanic or 

 of modern coral rocks " (Geological Observations on Volcanic Islands, etc., 

 Ed. ii., 1876, p. 140). 



