154 LIFE OF SIR JOHN LUBBOCK ch. 



"cameos," so that one must not complain and, like 

 Oliver, " ask for more." Very interesting too are the 

 chapters on " Law, custom, and scenery " and on 

 " Local Divisions." The illustrations also are admirable. 

 I congratulate you on the result of your labours and 

 again thank you verv heartily. — Very truly vours, 



T. G. BONNEY, 



Sir G. Stokes, President of the Royal Society, 

 says: 



Lensfield, Cambridge, 

 17th February 1902. 



Dear Lord Avebury — I am very much obliged to 

 you for your kind present of your book The Scenery 

 of England, which I received from the publishers a 

 couple of days ago. I see it contains a great deal of 

 information besides scenery, and promises to be very 

 interesting, though, having lectures on hand, I have 

 not yet had time to read much of it. 



I notice you speak of the different colours of different 

 lakes. This leads me to make a few remarks about 

 blue water, such as that of the Rhone as it issues from 

 the Lake of Geneva, or of the Rhine at the falls of 

 Schaffhausen. There is no doubt that the natural 

 colour by transmission of pure water is a pale blue ; 

 but you don't ordinarily get it in mass sufficiently pure 

 to show this. In the glaciers we have to deal with 

 water which has been distilled by Nature, precipitated 

 as snow, squeezed into ice, and so not contaminated 

 with organic matter by percolating through earth. 

 In the ice of a glacier arch we see the natural colour of 

 pure water. I have never been in Egypt ; but I sup- 

 pose from its name the Blue Nile owes its colour to the 

 same cause : it is fed chiefly by the melting of snow 

 and ice in Abyssinia. The milky colour of streams 

 running out of glaciers in Switzerland is due to abraded 

 matter in suspension, which gets deposited in passing 

 through a lake, so that after subsidence the water is 

 pure. Pardon me for mentioning all this, which I 

 daresay you are familiar with already. A very little 

 impurity, such as we have in bog water, is sufficient to 

 turn the scale, and prevent us from seeing the natural 

 pale blue of water. 



I saw in the Standard 2 or 8 days ago that you were 



