330 LIFE AT DOWN. ,ETAT. 33-45. [1847. 



with any care my paper on this subject, or even looked at the 

 coloured map, so that the new shelf described by me had not 

 been searched for, and my arguments and facts of detail not 

 in the least attended to. I entirely gave up the ghost, and 

 was quite chicken-hearted at the Geological Society, till you 

 reassured and reminded me of the main facts in the whole 

 case." 



The two following letters to Lyell, though of later date 

 (June, 1848), bear on the same subject : — 



" I was at the evening meeting [of the Geological Society], 

 but did not get within hail of you. What a fool (though I 



must say a very amusing one) did make of himself. 



Your speech was refreshing after it, and was well characterized 

 by Fox (my cousin) in three words — ' What a contrast ! ' That 

 struck me as a capital speculation about the Wealden Conti- 

 nent going down. I did not hear what you settled at the 

 Council; I was quite wearied out and bewildered. I find Smith, 

 of Jordan Hill, has a much worse opinion of R. Chambers's 

 book than even I have. Chambers has piqued me a little ; * 

 he says I ' propound ' and ' profess my belief ' that Glen Roy 

 is marine, and that the idea was accepted because the ' mo- 

 bility of the land was the ascendant idea of the day.' He 

 adds some very faint upper lines in Glen Spean (seen, by the 

 way, by Agassiz), and has shown that Milne and Kemp are 

 right in there being horizontal aqueous markings (not at co- 

 incident levels with those of Glen Roy) in other parts of 

 Scotland at great heights, and he adds several other cases. 

 This is the whole of his addition to the data. He not only 

 takes my line of argument from the buttresses and terraces 

 below the lower shelf and some other arguments (without 

 acknowledgment), but he sneers at all his predecessors not 

 having perceived the importance of the short portions of lines 

 intermediate between the chief ones in Glen Roy; whereas 



* 'Ancient Sea Margins, 1848/ The words quoted by my father should 

 be " the mobility of the land was an ascendant idea." 



