LETTERS FROM SIR CHARLES LYELL. 163 



received my President's Addresses, one packet of which 

 was sent by Mr. O. Rich, and another by an American gen- 

 tleman. You have heard, of course, of the death of Pro- 

 fessor Hoffman of Berlin. I have not heard whether we 

 are to have his " Geology of Sicily " as a posthumous work. 

 He was a man, I believe, of my own age, thirty-eight, 

 which makes it an unexpected loss. In my fifth edition 

 you will see a recast of the Elevation Crater controversy, 

 in which I reply to Von Buch's article in " Poggendorf," 

 and to De Beaumont's in the " Memoires pour Servir," &c., 

 and, I suppose, the ** Annales des Mines." I had a good 

 deal of personal intercourse with these two geologists last 

 year at Paris and in Germany, and, after all the explanar 

 tions I could get, I believe them to have started wrong in 

 the first instance, and believe them to be now working 

 themselves deeper and deeper into an untenable hypothe- 

 sis. I wish, indeed, there was a bridge of steam across the 

 Atlantic, that I might transport, if not myself, at least the 

 first printed copy of my fifth edition to New Haven. As 

 to American geology, I always feel that I have so much to 

 do at my own door that I have no business to go there for 

 these ten years, for it would be like wishing to geologize 

 the moon in our present infancy of the knowledge of the 

 earth. Mr. Murchison's book will hardly be out this year, 

 but I hope to see it very early next year ; and such maps, 

 sections, and fossil illustrations, never, I believe, adorned a 

 book on our subject yet. You may well suppose that " LyelPs 

 Elements " are not much accelerated by the recast of the 

 Principles. I always recommend Bakewell 



FROM SIR CHARLES LYELL. 



NKW YORK, April 4, 1842. 



Now that I have travelled from Niagara to 



Georgia, and have met a great number of your country- 

 men on the Continent of Europe, and heard the manner in 

 which they ascribe the taste they have for science to your 



