LYELL. 319 



shall find a difficulty in expressing myself in 

 French. We are to meet Count Le Serres there, a 

 gentlemanlike and well-informed naturalist, who 

 has a property on Mont Dore, and knows more 

 geology than anyone we have met here, professors 

 not excepted. He organized a geological society 

 here, and they chose Count Montlosier as president ; 

 but the Jesuits took alarm, and, declaring that 

 Montlosier had written a book against Genesis, got 

 the Prefect and Mayor and Government to oppose, 

 and at last put the thing down ; at least it merged 

 in the regular scientific Etablissement de la Ville, 

 and Montlosier is just coming out with a book 

 against the Jesuits, a more popular subject in France 

 at present than geology. We are to visit him at 

 his chateau near Mont Dore. We like the people 

 and the country. 



Believe me, your affectionate son, 



Charles Lyell. 



TO HIS father. 



Bains de Mont Dore, Auvergne. 



Jiine bth, 1882. 



My dear father, 



I am at this moment arrived here, after 

 passing three delightful days at Count de Mont- 

 losier's, an old man of seventy-four, in full 

 possession of faculties of no mean order, and of an 

 imagination as lively as a poet's of twenty-five. I 

 stayed a day longer than the Murchisons, as I was 

 determined to have one more trial to find a junction 



