CORRESPONDENCE WITH SCIENTIFIC MEN. 53 



FROM MR. BAKEWELL. 



November 16, 1830. 



I HAVE not seen Df. Morton's paper on the tertiary for- 

 mation of New Jersey ; but Mr. Mantell, who has read it, 

 does not consider it as affording satisfactory proofs of such 

 formations. Mr. Lyell's book is out in the first volume. 

 If you have seen it, you will think there is much Scotch 

 amplification. A Scotchman can never write briefly and 

 directly to the point. The principal merit is making that 

 part of the Huttonian system more clear which treats of 

 recent formations and those at present going on ; geolo- 

 gists of late have too much overlooked the extent and im- 

 portance of these formations. What he says of calcareous 

 strata forming by warm springs holding calcareous or silici- 

 ous earth in solution, is a modification of what I advanced 

 in 1815, second edition of my " Geology," chap. xvi. The 

 most ingenious part of the book is that on temperature, in 

 which he endeavors to prove that the polar and equatorial 

 zones of the globe might change their temperature by a 

 transference of the land. Indeed, he has shown that a dif- 

 ference of temperature equal to ten or fifteen degrees of 

 latitude is at present produced by the different disposition 

 of the land and sea in the same latitudes. I think his 

 arguments against the progressive development of organic 

 beings far from satisfactory, and that the chapter on the 

 recent formation of man is a tissue of far-strained mystifi- 

 cation and special pleading. Not that I deny the recent 

 formation of man ; but, on Mr. Lyell's own principles, we 

 have no more reason for thinking him a recent animal than 

 we have for inferring that monkeys and all the mammalia 



are as ancient as the globe itself. I am afraid 



you will grow tired of this geological gossip, and rejoice 

 that you see land 



