1843-1882] E. FORBES 409 



stalled me in what I had hoped would have been an interest- Letter 317 

 ing discussion viz., on the relation between the present 

 alpine and Arctic floras, with connection to the last change 

 of climate from Arctic to temperate, when the then Arctic 

 lowland plants must have been driven up the mountains. 1 



I am much pleased to hear of the pleasant reception 

 you received at Edinburgh. 2 I hope your impressions will 

 continue agreeable ; my associations with auld Reekie are 

 very friendly. Do you ever see Dr. Coldstream ? If you 

 do, would you give him my kind remembrances ? You ask 

 about amber. I believe all the species are extinct (i.e. with- 

 out the amber has been doctored), and certainly the greater 

 number are. 3 



If you have any other corrections ready, will you send 

 them soon, for I shall go to press with second Part in less 

 than a week. I have been so busy that I have not yet 

 begun d'Urville, and have read only first chapter of Canary 

 Islands ! I am most particularly obliged to you for having 

 lent me the latter, for 1 know not where else I could have ever 

 borrowed it. There is the Kosmos to read, and Lyell's 

 Travels in North America. It is awful to think of how much 

 there is to read. What makes H. Watson a renegade ? I 

 had a talk with Captain Beaufort the other day, and he 

 charged me to keep a book and enter anything which 

 occurred to me, which deserved examination or collection 

 in any part of the world, and he would sooner or later get 

 it in the instructions to some ship. If anything occurs to 

 you let me hear, for in the course of a month or two I 

 must write out something. I mean to urge collections of all 

 kinds on any isolated islands. I suspect that there are several 

 in the northern half of the Pacific, which have never been 

 visited by a collector. This is a dull, untidy letter. Farewell. 



1 Forbes' Essay " On the Connexion between the Distribution of the 

 Existing Fauna and Flora of the British Isles and the Geological Changes 

 which have affected their Area," was published in 1846. See note 2, 

 Letter 20. 



1 Sir J. D. Hooker was a candidate for the Chair of Botany at Edin- 

 burgh. See Life and Letters, I., pp. 335, 342. 



3 For an account of plants in amber see Goeppert and Berendt, 

 Der Bernstein und die in ihm befindlichen Pflanzenreste der Vorwelt, 

 Berlin, 1845 ; Goeppert, Coniferen des Bernstein, Danzig, 1883 ; 

 Conwentz, Monographic der Baltischen Bernsteinbaume, Danzig, 1890. 



