4/8 GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION [CHAP. VI 



Letter 363 Remember glacial action of Lebanon when you speak of 

 no glacial action in S. on Himalaya, and in S.E. Australia. 



P.S. I have been very glad to see Sir C. Bunbury's 

 letter. 1 If the genera which I name from Gardner 2 are not 

 considered by him as usually temperate forms, I am, of course, 

 silenced ; but Hooker looked over the MS. chapter some ten 

 years ago and did not score out my remarks on them, and he 

 is generally ready enough to pitch into my ignorance and 

 snub me, as I often deserve. My wonder was how any, ever 

 so few, temperate forms reached the mountains of Brazil ; and 

 I supposed they travelled by the rather high land and ranges 

 (name forgotten) which stretch from the Cordillera towards 

 Brazil. Cordillera genera of plants have also, somehow, 

 reached the Silla of Caracas. When I think of the vegetation 

 of New Zealand and west coast of South America, where 

 glaciers now descend to or very near to the sea, I feel it rash 

 to conclude that all tropical forms would be destroyed by a 

 considerably cooler period under the Equator. 



Letter 364 To C - Lyell. 



Down, Thursday, Feb. I5th [1866]. 



Many thanks for Hooker's letter ; it is a real pleasure to 

 me to read his letters ; they are always written with such spirit. 

 I quite agree that Agassiz could never mistake weathered 

 blocks and glacial action ; though the mistake has, I know, 

 been made in two or three quarters of the world. I have 

 often fought with Hooker about the physicists putting their 

 veto on the world having been cooler ; it seems to me as 

 irrational as if, when geologists first brought forward some 

 evidence of elevation and subsidence, a former Hooker had 

 declared that this could not possibly be admitted until 

 geologists could explain what made the earth rise and fall. 

 It seems that I erred greatly about some of the plants on 

 the Organ Mountains. 3 But I am very glad to hear about 



1 The letter 'from Bunbury to Lyell, already quoted on this subject. 

 Bunbury writes : " There is nothing in the least northern, nothing that is 

 not characteristically Brazilian, in the flora of the Organ Mountains." 



2 Travels in the Interior of Brazil, by G. Gardner : London, 1846. 



3 "On the Organ Mountains of Brazil some few temperate European, 

 some Antarctic, and some Andean genera were found by Gardner, which 



