364 SPREAD OF EVOLUTION. [l86l. 



P.S. We are very much obliged for the ' London Review/ 

 We like reading much of it, and the science is incomparably 

 better than in the Athenaum. You shall not go on very 

 long sending it, as you will be ruined by pennies and trouble, 

 but I am under a horrid spell to the Athenaum and the 

 Gardener^ Chronicle, but I have taken them in for so many 

 years, that I cannot give them up. 



[The next letter refers to Lyell's visit to the Bidden- 

 ham gravel-pits near Bedford in April 1861. The visit 

 was made at the invitation of Mr. James Wyatt, who had 

 recently discovered two stone implements " at the depth of 

 thirteen feet from the surface of the soil," resting " imme- 

 diately on solid beds of oolitic-limestone." * Here, says Sir 

 C. Lyell, "I .... for the first time, saw evidence which 

 satisfied me of the chronological relations of those three phe- 

 nomena the antique tools, the extinct mammalia, and the 

 glacial formation."] 



( C. Darwin to C. Lyell. 



Down, April 12 [1861]. 



MY DEAR LYELL, I have been most deeply interested 

 by your letter. You seem to have done the grandest work, 

 and made the greatest step, of any one with respect to- 

 man. 



It is an especial relief to hear that you think the French 

 superficial deposits are deltoid and semi-marine ; but two days 

 ago I was saying to a friend, that the unknown manner of the 

 accumulation of these deposits, seemed the great blot in all 

 the work done. I could not stomach debacles or lacustrine 

 beds. It is grand. I remember Falconer told me that he 



* 'Antiquity of Man,' fourth edition, p. 214. 



