18591863] COAL PLANTS 151 



Philosophical Society published P 1 If so, and you could get Letter 101 

 me a copy, I should like to have one. 



Believe me, my dear Henslow, I feel grateful to you on 

 this occasion, and for the multitude of kindnesses you have 

 done me from my earliest days at Cambridge. 



To C. Lyell. Letter 102 



Down, May 22nd [1860]. 



Hooker has sent me a letter of Thwaites, 2 of Ceylon, who 

 makes exactly the same objections which you did at first 

 about the necessity of all forms advancing, and therefore the 

 difficulty of simple forms still existing. There was no 

 worse omission than this in my book, and I had the dis- 

 cussion all ready. 



I am extremely glad to hear that you intend adding new 

 arguments about the imperfection of the Geological Record. 

 I always feel this acutely, and am surprised that such men 

 as Ramsay and Jukes do not feel it more. 



I quite agree on insufficient evidence about mummy 

 wheat. 3 



When you can spare it, I should like (but out of mere 

 curiosity) to see Binney 4 on Coal marine marshes. 



I once made Hooker 5 very savage by saying that I 

 believed the Coal plants grew in the sea, like mangroves. 



1 Henslow's remarks are not given in the above-mentioned report in 

 the Cambridge Chronicle. 



2 See Letter 97. 



3 See notes appended to a letter to Lyell, Sept. 1843 (Botany). 



4 Edward William Binney, F.R.S. (1812-81) contributed numerous 

 papers to the Royal, Pala^ontographical, Geological and other Societies, 

 on Upper Carboniferous and Permian Rocks ; his most important work 

 deals with the internal structure of Coal-Measure plants. In a paper 

 " On the Origin of Coal," published in the Memoirs of the Manchester 

 Literary and Philosophical Society, Vol. VIII., p. 148, in 1848, Binney 

 expressed the view that the sediments of the Coal Period were marine 

 rather than estuarine, and were deposited on the floor of an ocean, 

 which was characterised by a " uniformity and shallowness unknown " 

 in any oceanic area of the present day. 



5 See Life and Letters, I., p. 356. 



