426 MY LIFE 



interested in this question, after reading Darwin's exposition 

 of his views should read the twenty-third chapter of my 

 " Island Life," the facts and arguments in which, so far as I 

 am aware, have never been controverted. Darwin himself, 

 however, never accepted them. 



On the question of the ice-origin of Alpine lakes I had 

 much correspondence with Sir Charles, but I could never 

 get him to accept my extreme views. In March, 1869, I 

 received from him a letter of thirteen pages, and another of 

 thirty pages, on this and allied questions, setting forth the 

 reasons why he rejected ice action as having ground out 

 the larger lakes, much as he states them in the fourth edition 

 of " The Antiquity of Man." At page 361 he says that 

 " the gravest objection to the hypothesis of glacial erosion 

 on a stupendous scale is afforded by the entire absence of 

 lakes of the first magnitude in several areas where they ought 

 to exist, if the enormous glaciers which once occupied those 

 spaces had possessed the deep excavating power ascribed 

 to them." He then goes on to adduce numerous places 

 where he thinks there ought to have been lakes on the glacier 

 theory, which are the same as he adduced in letters to myself, 

 and which I answered in each case, and sometimes at great 

 length, by similar arguments to those I have adduced in vol. i. 

 chap. v. of my " Studies, Scientific and Social." If anyone who 

 is interested in these questions, after considering Sir Charles 

 Lyell's difficulties and objections in his " Antiquity of Man," 

 will read the above chapter, giving special attention to the 

 sections headed The Conditions that favour the Production 

 of Lakes by Ice-erosion, and the following section on Objec- 

 tions of Modern Writers considered, I think he will, if he had 

 paid any attention to the phenomena in glaciated regions, 

 admit that I show the theory of ice-erosion to be the only 

 one that explains all the facts. 



During the same year (1869) I find passages of interest 



in my letters on quite different subjects, some of which I 



wrote upon at a much later period. On February 25, in a 



letter about the Bethnal Green Museum, I added, "Have 



