232 GEOLOGY [Chap. IX 



Letter 566 To T. H. Huxley. 



Down, April 14th [i860]. 



Many thanks for your kind and pleasant letter. I have 

 been much interested by Deep-sea Soundings} and will return 

 it by this post, or as soon as I have copied a few sentences. 

 I think you said that some one was investigating the sound- 

 ings. I earnestly hope that you will ask the some one to 

 carefully observe whether any considerable number of the 

 calcareous organisms are more or less friable, or corroded, or 

 scaling ; so that one might form some crude notion whether 

 the deposition is so rapid that the foraminifera are preserved 

 from decay and thus are forming strata at this profound 

 depth. This is a subject which seems to me to have been 

 much neglected in examining soundings. 



Bronn 2 has sent me two copies of his MorpJiologiscJie 

 Studien iiber die Gestaltungsgesetze. It looks elementary. 

 If you will write you shall have the copy ; if not I will give 

 it to the Linnean Library. 



I quite agree with the letter from Lyell that your ex- 

 tinguished theologians lying about the cradle of each new 

 science, 3 etc., etc., is splendid. 



Letter 567 To T. H. Huxley. 



May 10th [1862 or later]. 



I have been in London, which has prevented my writing 

 sooner. I am very sorry to hear that you have been ill : 

 if influenza, I can believe in any degree of prostratiun of 

 strength ; if from over-work, for God's sake do not be rash 

 and foolish. You ask for criticisms ; I have none to give, 

 only impressions. I fully agree with your " skim ming-of- pot 

 theory," and very well you have put it. With respect [to] 

 contemporaneity I nearly agree with you, and if you will look 



1 Specimens of the mud dredged by H.M.S. Cyclops were sent to 

 Huxley for examination, who gave a brief account of them in Appendix A 

 of Capt. Dayman's Report, 1858, under the title Deep-sea Soundings in 

 the North At 'Ian tic. 



2 H. G. Bronn, Morphologische Stud/en iiber die Gestaltungsgesclze 

 der Naturkbrper iibcrhaupt und der organise/ten insbesonderc : Leipzig, 

 1858. 



3 Danvinia/ia, Collected Essays, Vol. II., p. 52. 



