18671882] ANTHONY RICH 447 



though I have very little faith in medicine, this, I think, has Letter 782 

 done me much good. Well, we are both so old that we must 

 expect some troubles : I shall be seventy-three on Feb. I2th. 

 I have been glad to hear about the pine-leaves, 1 and you are 

 the first man who has confirmed my account that they are 

 drawn in by the base, with a very few exceptions. With 

 respect to your Wandsworth case, I think that if I had heard 

 of it before publishing, I would have said nothing about the 

 ledges ; 2 for the Grisedale case, 3 mentioned in my book and 

 observed whilst I was correcting the proof-sheets, made me 

 feel rather doubtful. Yet the Corniche case 4 shows that 

 worms at least aid in making the ledges. Nevertheless, I 

 wish I had said nothing about the confounded ledges. The 

 success of this worm book has been almost laughable. I 

 have, however, been plagued with an endless stream of letters 

 on the subject ; most of them very foolish and enthusiastic, 

 but some containing good facts, which 1 have used in cor- 

 recting yesterday the " sixth Thousand." 



Your friend George's work about the viscous state of the 

 earth and tides and the moori has lately been attracting much 

 attention, 5 and all the great judges think highly of the work. 

 He intends to try for the Plumian Professorship of Mathe- 

 matics and Natural Philosophy at Cambridge, which is a good 

 and honourable post of about 800 a year. I think that he 

 will get it 6 when Challis is dead, and he is very near his end. 

 He has all the great men Sir W. Thomson, Adams, Stokes, 

 etc. on his side. He has lately been chief examiner for the 

 Mathematical Tripos, which was tremendous work ; and the 

 day before yesterday he started for Southampton for a five- 



1 The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the Action of Worms, 

 1 88 1, p. 71. 



3 " Ledges of Earth on Steep Hill-sides " (ibid., p. 278). 



3 " The steep, grass-covered sides of a mountainous valley in West- 

 morland, called Grisedale, were marked in many places with innumerable, 

 almost horizontal, little ledges. . . . Their formation was in no way 

 connected with the action of worms (and their absence is an inexplicable 

 fact) . . . (ibid., p. 282). 



4 Ibid., p. 281. 



5 Published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, 

 1879, 1880, 1 88 1. 



6 He was elected Plumian Professor of Astronomy and Experimental 

 Philosophy in 1883. 



