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Harkness's reply to this I have not seen, but its general nature 

 may be gathered from the letter Sedgwick wrote a week or so 

 later : — 



Dent, Kendal, September 12, 1856. 



My dear Professor, 



I am very greatly obliged to you for your long and kind letter. The 

 information you have given me respecting the mineral axis [in the S. of Scot- 

 land. J.G.G.] I cannot now turn to profit, for I have given up all hope of 

 meeting Professor Rogers. * * * I have not the least objection to your 

 hypothesis respecting the Upper and Lower Skiddaw Slates if the sections will 

 sanction it. It is not at all necessary even to suppose that the granite breaks 

 out through the lowest group of .Skiddaw Slates, though the remnant of my 

 Wemerianism might have misled me 011 such a point when I examined the 

 Skiddaw Slates, now more than thirty years since : and I have, unfortunately, 

 never examined it since. 



You say the/ossi/s of the so-called ;<//<?;- and lower Skiddaw Slates are the 

 same. But what are the fossils ? If they are mere fucoids, I should not regard 

 the similarity as of much consequence. If the same shells, or the same grapto- 

 lites occur both in the so-called upper as well as in the lower division of the 

 Slates, then the fossil evidence would be of value. That makes me anxious (as 

 indeed I have been for years back) about the gritty beds in the great glens and 

 ravines of Grassmoor. In this Salter finds many fossils in the Stiper Stones 

 and other hard gritty bands which overlie the Lower Longmynd Series. The 

 Rocks of Barrow Head very much resemble the Welsh group under the Lingida 

 Flags. 



Are you sure that the Balmae fossils are Wenlock ? I doubt it still ; for my 

 own small collection proves nothing for or against the supposition, and the 

 section, so far as I understood it to be, would put these fossils into an old 

 Cambrian group. 



I should delight to meet you on the frontier chains of Scotland, but, alas ! 

 old age is spoiling me. I used to take great liberties, and cared little about 

 charging any drift, as I had good sight and was a tough walker. But noi.v I am 

 a gouty old man, and can endure no wet. My sight is bad, and one eye is of no 

 use to me, and my walking days are nearly over. So I should be a downright 

 drag upon an active young man like you. * * It is quite possible that Mc. Coy's 

 List might be called Lockerby, and be so published in the "Athenasum." But 

 I am about certain that in the abstract of my paper published in the Reports of 

 the British Association, the graptolites were called the fossils of the Moffat 

 Group. 



Pray look at the abstract if you possess the Report of the Edinburgh Meeting 

 of the British Association. I am called out, and must conclude. 

 I am truly and gratefully yours, 



ADAM SEDGWICK. 



P.S. — I am here without books of reference. 



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