EVOLUTION [CHA*. II 



Letter 46 ventured to say so in a note to Huxley. I had not thought 

 of these lectures in relation to the Athenaeum, 1 but I am 

 inclined quite to agree with you, and that we had better pause 

 before anything is said. . . . (N.B. I found Falconer very 

 indignant at the manner in which Huxley treated Cuvier 

 in his Royal Institution lectures ; and I have gently told 

 Huxley so.) I think we had better do nothing : to try in 

 earnest to get a great naturalist into the Athenaeum and fail, 

 is far worse than doing nothing, 



How strange, funny, and disgraceful that nearly all 

 (Faraday and Sir ]. Herschel at least exceptions) our great men 

 are in quarrels in couplets ; it never struck me before. . . . 



Letter 47 C. Lyell to C. Darwin. 



In the Life and Letters, II., p. 72, is given a letter (June i6th, 1856) 

 to Lyell, in which Darwin exhales his indignation over the "ex- 

 tensionists " who created continents ad libitum to suit the convenience 

 of their theories. On page 74 a fuller statement of his views is given in 

 a letter dated June 25th. We have not seen Lyell's reply to this, but 

 his reply to Darwin's letter of June i6th is extant, and is here printed for 

 the first time. 



53, Harley Street, London, June I7th, 1856. 



I wonder you did not also mention D. Sharpe's paper, 2 

 just published, by which the Alps were submerged as far as 

 9,000 feet of their present elevation above the sea in the 

 Glacial period and then since uplifted again. Without ad- 

 mitting this, you would probably convey the alpine boulders 

 to the Jura by marine currents, and if so, make the Alps and 

 Jura islands in the glacial sea. And would not the Glacial 

 theory, as now very generally understood, immerse as much 

 of Europe as I did in my original map of Europe, when I 

 simply expressed all the area which at some time or other 

 had been under water since the commencement of the Eocene 

 period ? I almost suspect the glacial submergence would 

 exceed it. 



1 Mr. Huxley was in 1858 elected to the Athenaeum Club under Rule 2, 

 which provides for the annual election of " a certain number of persons 

 of distinguished eminence in science, literature, or the arts, or for public 



services." 



3 " On the Last Elevation of the Alps, &c." (Quart. Journ. GeoL Soc., 

 Vol. XII., 1856, p. 102). 



