334 Correspondence — Mr. W. Theobald — Mr. A. B. Wynne. 



ice, and maintains that it is equally applicable to pebbles and 

 boulders, instancing the flints on the Irish coast and the constituents 

 of the Chesil Bank as erratics, in his sense of the word. If the 

 bulk of geologists agree with Mr. Wynne in this, I confess I shall 

 feel surprised. Mr. Wynne also disputes certain views of mine 

 touching minor details of geology in the Salt Eange, but it is not 

 ■ my intention to notice these, as, the ground being unknown to the 

 bulk of your readers, the discussion would be both tedious and 

 unprofitable. 



In justice to myself, however, I cannot permit the second para- 

 graph of Mr. Wynne's letter to pass unchallenged, as it contains a 

 complete and incomprehensible misapprehension of my meaning. 

 The passage runs thus : " In these remarks,^ Mr. Theobald restricts 

 and applies the term ' Erratics ' exclusively to certain blocks sup- 

 posed to have been ice-ti'an sported, advocating the idea also [vide 

 foot-note) that the word is only applicable in describing recent phases 

 of geology:' 



Of course I neither said nor meant any such thing as the extra- 

 ordinary statement I have italicised above. What I did say was : 

 " Under these circumstances, therefore, I do not think that these 

 red granite boulders can be termed ' erratics," unless we fall back on 

 the hypothesis that all of them have been erratics during a former 

 and wholly different phase of geological life than that which we at 

 present have to describe and deal with." (I.e.) 



Now I deny that my words can fairly be twisted so as to yield 

 the extraordinary sense, or rather nonsense, which Mr. Wynne 

 attributes to me ; and had my MS. not received some mutilation 

 (unknown to me) in passing through the press in Calcutta, this 

 misapprehension of my colleague could hardly have happened. I 

 originally wrote some such explanatory sentence as the following : 

 " Unless on the principle of once a parson always a parson, we hold 

 that once an erratic, always an erratic." Of course the Chesil Bank 

 boulders may at one time or another have been erratics ; but unless 

 on the principle of the above proverb, they can, 1 think, be termed so 

 no longer. 



As this is the exact opposite of the ridiculous view Mr. Wynne 

 fathers on me, I wish to repudiate the mistake in the same pages 

 wherein it appears, to my great discredit if uncontradicted. 



Maeree, Panjab, May Uth, 1878. W. TheobALD. 



WHAT IS AN ERRATIC ? 



Sir, — I should have called attention in the second paragraph of 

 my letter, in your April Number, 1878, p. 185, to the passage in my 

 friend Mr. Theobald's remarks which reads thus: "Under the head 



' Erratics ' my colleague describes others, which are not 



only, in my opinion, not ' erratics ' at all, but belong to diverse 

 geological epochs." 



This, together with his footnote, to which I referred, left the 

 impression that, according to him, "erratics" must belong to but one 

 and that a recent geological epoch. A. B. Wynne. 



1 Records of the Geological Suryey of India, vol. x. part iv. p. 223. 



