ISO GEOLOGY [CHAP. IX 



Letter 520 But I will write no more, and pray your forgiveness for this 

 long, ill-written outpouring. I am very glad you keep to 

 your subject of the terraces. I have lately observed that you 

 have one great authority (C. Prevost), [not] that authority 

 signifies a [farthing ?] on your side respecting your heretical 

 and damnable doctrine of the ocean falling. You see I am 

 orthodox to the burning pitch. 



Letter 521 To D. Milne-Home. 1 



Down, [Sept] 2Oth, [1847]. 



I am much obliged by your note. I returned from 

 London on Saturday, and I found then your memoir, 2 which 

 I had not then received, owing to the porter having been 

 out when I last sent to the Geolog. Soc. I have read your 

 paper with the greatest interest, and have been much struck 

 with the novelty and importance of many of your facts. 

 I beg to thank you for the courteous manner in which you 

 combat me, and I plead quite guilty to your rebuke about 

 demonstration. 3 You have misunderstood my paper on a 

 few points, but I do not doubt that is owing to its being 

 badly and tediously written. You will, I fear, think me very 

 obstinate when I say that I am not in the least convinced 

 about the barriers 4 : they remain to me as improbable as 

 ever. But the oddest result of your paper on me (and I 

 assure you, as far as I know myself, it is not perversity) 

 is that I am very much staggered in favour of the ice-lake 



1 See note, p. 113. 



2 " On the Parallel Roads of Lochaber, with Remarks on the Change 

 of Relative Levels of Sea and Land in Scotland, and on the Detrital 

 Deposits in that Country," Trans. R. Soc.Edinb., Vol. XVI., p. 395, 1849. 

 [Read March ist and April 5th, 1847.] 



3 Mr. Milne quotes a passage from Mr. Darwin's paper {Phil. Trans. 

 R. Soc., 1839, p. 56), in which the latter speaks of the marine origin of 

 the parallel roads of Lochaber as appearing to him as having been 

 demonstrated. Mr. Milne adds : " I regret that Mr. Darwin should 

 have expressed himself in these very decided and confident terms, 

 especially as his survey was incomplete ; for I venture to think that it 

 can be satisfactorily established that the parallel roads of Lochaber were 

 formed by fresh-water lakes " (Milne, loc. /., p. 400). 



4 Mr. Milne believed that the lower parts of the valleys were rilled 

 with detritus, which constituted barriers and thus dammed up the waters 

 into lakes. 



