1867—1882] ANTHONY RICH \J 



though 1 have very little fuith in medicine, this, I think, has Letter ;8a 

 done me much good. Well, we arc both so old that we must 

 expect some troubles : I shall be seventy-three on Feb. 12th. 

 1 have been glad to hear about the pine-L . u are 



the first man wli<> lias confirmed my account that they are 

 drawn in by the base, with .1 very few exceptions. With 

 respect to youi Wandsworth case, I think that if I had heard 

 of it before publishing, I would have said nothing about the 

 ledges; 1 for the Grisedale case, 3 mentioned in my book and 

 observed whilst I was correcting the proof-sheets, made me 

 feel rather doubtful. Yet the Corniche case 1 shows that 

 worms at least aid in making the ledges. Nevertheless, I 

 wish I had said nothing about the confounded ledges. The 

 success of this worm book has been almost laughable. I 

 have, however, been plagued with an endless stream of letters 

 on the subject ; most of them very foolish and enthusiastic, 

 but some containing good facts, which I have used in cor- 

 recting yesterday the "sixth Thousand." 



Your friend George's work about the viscous state of the 

 earth and tides and the moon has lately been attracting much 

 attention, 5 and all the great judges think highly of the work. 

 He intends to try for the Plumian Professorship of Mathe- 

 matics and Natural Philosophy at Cambridge, which is a good 

 and honourable post of about £800 a year. I think that he 

 will get it fi when Challis is dead, and he is very near his end. 

 lie has all the great men — Sir W. Thomson, Adams, Stokes, 

 etc. — on his side. He has lately been chief examiner for the 

 Mathematical Tripos, which was tremendous work; and the 

 day before yesterday he started for Southampton for a fr 



1 The Formation of Vegetable Mould thi the Action of Worms, 



18S1, p. 71. 



1 " Ledges of Earth on Steep Hill-sides p. 278). 



1 "The steep, grass-covered sides of a mountainous valley in W< »t- 

 morland, called (irisedale, were marked in many places with innumerable, 

 almost horizontal, little ledges. . . . Their formation was in no way 

 connected with the action of worms (and their absence is an inexplicable 

 fact) . . . {ibid., p. 282). 



4 Ibid., p. 281. 



* Published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, 

 1879, 1S80, 1 88 1. 



6 He was elected Plumian Professor of Astronomy and Experimental 

 Philosophy in 1S83. 



