LETTER FROM LORD ELLESMERE. 415 



Devonian or Old Red, and which occupy a " quasi " 

 Upper Silurian place. (Fide my Memoii^,) 



1 1 shall be in Bohemia all July clearing out a grand 

 Silurian Basin/ 



FROM LORD ELLESMERE. 



' Worsley, Manchester, November 27th, 1849. 



' I have on two grounds to apologize for the liberty 

 I take in addressing this letter to the author of 

 Footprints of the Creator. In the first place, I have 

 not the privilege of your acquaintance. In the second, 

 I am one of a numerous class of readers justly stigma- 

 tized as " dilettanti," who are reduced to take upon 

 trust statements of scientific facts, and whose opinion 

 upon questions of inference from such facts is of no 

 value or authority to others. I believe, however, I am 

 scarcely wrong in supposing that though your work is 

 addressed to readers of the highest class, its aim and 

 intention is not confined to such, and that a large 

 portion of it at least is intended for the use, instruction, 

 and protection of persons like myself. If so, in labour- 

 ing for the benefit of such persons to neutralize the 

 emanations of a poisonous book, you have, as seems to 

 me, done that which demands the gratitude of the 

 Christian world, and performed with signal felicity and 

 success the office of a sanitary commissioner of science. 

 I cannot speak of myself as one whom your work has 

 rescued from positive danger. I read the Vestiges with 

 disbelief and detestation, but it has been a deep satis- 

 faction to me to find such impressions justified and 

 buttressed by arguments which I could not supply, and 

 to feel assured that my own incredulity and aversion 

 are not based merely on my own ignorance and inca- 



