DISTRUST OF GLACIAL THEORY. 269 



It is a slight local phenomenon. To me, the 

 ensemble of geological phenomena seems to 

 prove, not the prevalence of this glacial sur- 

 face on which you would carry along your 

 boulders, but a very high temperature spread- 

 ing almost to the poles, a temperature favor- 

 able to organizations resembling those now 

 living in the tropics. Your ice frightens me, 

 and gladly as I would welcome you here, my 

 dear friend, I think, perhaps, for the sake of 

 your health, and also that you may not see 

 this country, always so hideous, under a sheet 

 of snow and ice (in February), you would do 

 better to come two months later, with the 

 first verdure. This is suggested by a letter 



received yesterday by M. d'O , which 



alarmed me a little, because the state of your 

 eyes obliged you to write by another hand. 

 Pray do not think of traveling before you are 

 quite well. I close this letter, feeling sure that 

 it does not contain a line which is not an ex- 

 pression of friendship and of the high esteem 

 I bear you. The magnificence of your last 

 numbers, eight and nine, cannot be told. How 

 admirably executed are your Macropoma, the 

 Ophiopris procerus, MantelFs great beast, the 

 minute details of the Dercetis, Psammodus, 

 . . . the skeletons. . . . There is nothing 



