62 LIFE OF 



of the coast of Chili, the deposits containing extinct 

 mammalia in the neighbourhood of the Plata, the areas 

 of elevation and subsidence in the Pacific and Indian 

 Oceans, as deduced from the study of coral formations, 

 and the formation of mould (the precursor of a work he 

 issued more than forty years later). Papers on the con- 

 nection of certain volcanic phenomena, and on the 

 formation of mountain chains, and other geological notes 

 on South America, were read in 1838 ; the interesting 

 Parallel Roads of Glen Roy, in Scotland, which he 

 believed to be of marine origin, were described in 1839; 

 the erratic (glacial) boulders of South America, in 1841 ; 

 and coral reefs in 1842 : a full record, one would imagine, 

 of busy years, occupied also with secretarial work. Lyell, 

 writing to Sir John Herschel (May 24, 1837), says: "I 

 am very full of Darwin's new theory of coral islands, and 

 have urged Whewell to make him read it at our next 

 meeting. I must give up my volcanic crater theory for 

 ever, though it costs me a pang at first." In March, 

 1838, Lyell describes the reception of the paper on 

 volcanic phenomena at the Geological Society. " He 

 opened upon De la Beche, Phillips, and others, his whole 

 battery of the earthquakes and volcanoes of the Andes ; 

 and argued that spaces of a thousand miles long were 

 simultaneously subject to earthquakes and volcanic erup- 

 tions, and that the elevation of the Pampas, Patagonia, 

 &c., all depended upon a common cause." In fit 

 acknowledgment of such services to science, he was 

 elected a Fellow of the Royal Society on January 24, 

 1839. 

 Early in 1839 Darwin married his cousin, Emma 



