160 GEOLOGY [CHAP. IX 



Letter 507 diffusion with plants. Remember that we hope to see you in 

 the autumn. 



P. S.-- There is a capital paper in the September number 

 of Annals and Magazine, translated from Pictet and Humbert, 

 on Fossil Fish of Lebanon, 1 but you will, I daresay, have 

 received the original. It is capital in relation to modification 

 of species ; I would not wish for more confirmatory facts, 

 though there is no direct allusion to the modification of 

 species. Hooker, by the way, gave an admirable lecture at 

 Nottingham; 2 I read it in MS., or rather, heard it. I am 

 glad it will be published, for it was capital. 



Sunday morning. 



P.S. I have just received a letter from Asa Gray with the 

 following passage, so that, according to this, I am the chief 

 cause of Agassiz's absurd views : 



" Agassiz is back (I have not seen him), and he went at 

 once down to the National Academy of Sciences, from which 

 I sedulously keep away, and, I hear, proved to them that the 

 Glacial period covered the whole continent of America with 

 unbroken ice, and closed with a significant gesture and the 

 remark : ' So here is the end of the Darwin theory.' How do 

 you like that ? 



" I said last winter that Agassiz was bent on covering 

 the whole continent with ice, and that the motive of the 

 discovery he was sure to make was to make sure that there 

 should be no coming down of any terrestrial life from Tertiary 

 or post-Tertiary period to ours. You cannot deny that he has 

 done his work effectually in a truly imperial way." 



To C - 



Letter 508 



Down, July I4th, 1868. 



Mr. Agassiz's book 3 has been read aloud to me, and I am 

 wonderfully perplexed what to think about his precise state- 

 ments of the existence of glaciers in the Ceara Mountains, and 



1 "Recent Researches on the Fossil Fishes of Mount Lebanon," Ann. 

 Mag. Nat. Hist., Vol. XVIII., p. 237, 1866. 



2 Sir Joseph Hooker delivered a lecture at the Nottingham meeting 

 of the British Association (1866) on " Insular Floras," published in the 

 Gardeners' Chronicle, 1867. See Letters 366 377, etc. 



3 "Sur la Geologic de PAmazone," by MM. Agassiz and Continho, 

 Bull. Soc. Geol. France, Vol. XXV., p. 685, 1868. See also A Journey 

 in Brazil, by Professor and Mrs. Louis Agassiz, Boston, 1868. 



