LETTER FROM MURCHISON. 467 



whole of the first part, and for this he never 

 found the time. Apropos of these publica- 

 tions the following letters are in place. 



FROM SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. 



Belgrave Square, October 3, 1849. 



... I thank you very sincerely for your 

 most captivating general work on the " Prin- 

 ciples of Zoology." I am quite in love with 

 it. I was glad to find that you had arranged 

 the nummulites with the tertiary rocks, so 

 that the broad generalization I attempted in 

 my last work on the Alps, Apennines, and 

 Carpathians is completely sustained zoologic- 

 ally, and you will not be sorry to see the strat- 

 igraphical truth vindicated (versus E. de 



Beaumont and ). I beseech you to look 



at my memoir, and especially at my reason- 

 ing about the miocene and pliocene divisions 

 of the Alps and Italy. It seems to me man- 

 ifest that the percentage system derived from 

 marine life can never be applied to tertiary 

 terrestrial successions. . . . 



My friends have congratulated me much 

 on this my last effort, and as Lyell and others 

 most interested in opposing me have been 

 forward in approval, I begin to hope that I 

 am not yet quite done up ; and that unlike 



