136 Correspondence — Mr. Howorth. 



Mr. Reid, and those who think with him, to solve, and which I 

 cannot find any one willing to face, is how, with such a change only 

 as one degree in a century, or anything like it, we are to account 

 for the preservation of the flesh of the Mammoth in a series of 

 carcases found in the whole length of Siberia, and the condition of 

 which will not admit of their having been thawed once since they 

 were first frozen. There is the gauge. I challenge Mr. Eeid to pick it 

 up, and to give us something in the shape of a reasonable explanation. 



Mr. Eeid disapproves of my quoting Cuvier and Buckland and 

 D'Archiac, inasmuch as they are obsolete authorities on this point. 

 "Why D'Archiac — whose career was parallel with Lyell's, whose 

 opinions are quoted by Lyell with the gi'eatest respect, and whose 

 text-books are those in ordinary use in France — should be deemed in 

 any way an obsolete authority, considering the immense amount of 

 work he did in elucidating these very deposits, I know not. As to 

 the other two names, I only quoted them as a protest against Mr. 

 Eeid speaking superciliously of a theory which had the imprimatur 

 of such excellent observers. Perhaps before the subject is thrashed 

 out, we shall be able to furnish him with a list of names which will 

 surprise him, of geologists who have virtually indorsed Cuvier's and 

 Buckland's views on the subject, and this too quite recently. 



Mr. Eeid says : " After several years of study of Pleistocene beds, 

 I think that as a rule things did then progress faster, and that we 

 are now in a position of exceptionally slow changes." This I most 

 cordially accept, but I must say that this is not the Uniformitarian 

 doctrine laid down by the leader of the Uniformitarian school in 

 England, a most distinguished geologist very well known to Mr. 

 Eeid, on a famous occasion not three years ago. I also accept Mr. 

 ■Eeid's restriction of the invocation of cataclysm to cases which can- 

 not be explained without it. It is because I have been for years 

 trying to find an adequate explanation of this very difficulty, without 

 invoking a cataclj^sm, and have failed, that I have written the papers 

 which have appeared in the Geological Magazine. I most cordially 

 invite Mr. Eeid or anybody else to try to solve the matter. Not 

 however by ex cathedra statements. The problem is much too 

 difficult and the evidence much too consistent on one side to admit 

 of its being dismissed by one of those superficial waves of the hand 

 which neither antiquaries nor Philistines have been trained to ap- 

 preciate. The world cannot in these days be addressed, at least in 

 the domain of science, in this pontifical fashion, and is apt to resent 

 it. At all events that unmannerly part of the world which lives in 

 Lancashire requires some definite reasons before it does the kowtow, 

 and submits to oracular dicta. We are not discussing matters of 

 fact which have come under the observation of such good eyes as 

 those of Mr. Eeid, and which we should at once accept, but inferences 

 from facts of which we claim to be as good judges and as well 

 trained as the great men whose Olympus is in Jermyn Street. I 

 hope Mr. Eeid will forgive my treatment of his reference to the 

 antiquaries. If I did not value very highly his opinion, and his 

 work, I should not be scribbling this letter. 



Derby House, Eccles, Jan. \Oth, 1882. Henry H. Ho WORTH. 



