4/6 GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION [CHAP. VI 



Letter 362 I saw in the Gardeners' Chronicle the sentence about 

 the Origin dying in Germany, but did not know it was by 

 Seemann. 



Letter 363 To C. Lyell. 



Down, Feb. 7th [1866]. 



I am very much obliged for your note and the extract, 

 which have interested me extremely. I cannot disbelieve for 

 a moment Agassiz on Glacial action after all his experience, 

 as you say, and after that capital book 1 with plates which he 

 early published ; as for his inferences and reasoning on the 

 valley of the Amazon that is quite another question, nor can 

 he have seen all the regions to which Mrs. A. 2 alludes. Her 

 letter is not very clear to me, and I do not understand what 

 she means by " to a height of more than three thousand feet" 

 There are no erratic boulders (to which I particularly 

 attended) in the low country round Rio. It is possible or 

 even probable that this area may have subsided, for I could 

 detect no evidence of elevation, or any Tertiary formations or 

 volcanic action. The Organ Mountains are from six to seven 

 thousand feet in height ; and I am only a little surprised at 

 their bearing the marks of glacial action. For some temperate 

 genera of plants, viz., Vacciniuin, Andromeda, Gaultheria, 

 Hypericum, Drosera, Habenaria, inhabit these mountains, and 

 I look at this almost as good evidence of a cold period, as 

 glacial action. That there are not more temperate plants can 

 be accounted for by the isolated position of these mountains. 

 There are no erratic boulders on the Pacific coast north of 

 Chiloe, and but few glaciers in the Cordillera, but it by no 



/ 



1 Etudes sur les Glaciers; Neuchatel, 1840. 



2 A letter from Mrs. Agassiz to Lady Lyell, which had been for- 

 warded to Mr. Darwin. The same letter was sent also to Sir Charles 

 Bunbury, who, in writing to Lyell on Feb. 3rd, 1866, criticises some 

 of the statements. He speaks of Agassiz's observations on glacial 

 phenomena in Brazil as "very astonishing indeed; so astonishing that 

 I have very great difficulty in believing them. They shake my faith in 

 the glacial system altogether ; or perhaps they ought rather to shake 

 the faith in Agassiz. ... If Brazil was ever covered with glaciers, I can 

 see no reason why the whole earth should not have been so. Perhaps 

 the whole terrestrial globe was once ' one entire and perfect icicle ' 

 (From the privately printed Life of Sir Charles Bunbury, edited by 

 Lady Bunbury, Vol. ii., p. 334). 



