Old Orchard, Broadstone, Dorset. October 27, 1913.
Dear Sir Oliver Lodge,—Many thanks for your Romanes Lecture, which, owing to my ignorance of modern electrical theory and experiments, is more difficult for me than was your British Association Address.
I have been very much interested the last month by reading a book sent me from America by Mr. W.L. Webb, being "An Account of the Unparalleled Discoveries of Mr. T.J.J. See."
Several of Mr. See's own lectures are given, with references to his "Researches on the Evolution of the Stellar Systems," in two large volumes.
His theory of "capture" of suns, planets, and satellites [pg 180] seems to me very beautifully worked out under the influence of gravitation and a resisting medium of cosmical dust—which explains the origin and motions of the moon as well as that of all the planets and satellites far better than Sir G. Darwin's expulsion theory.
I note however that he is quite ignorant that Proctor, forty years ago, gave full reasons for this "capture" theory in his "Expanse of Heaven," and also that the same writer showed that the Milky Way could not have the enormous lateral extension he gives to it, but that it cannot really be much flattened. He does not even mention the proofs given of this both by Proctor and, I think, by Herbert Spencer, while in Mr. Webb's volume (opposite p. 212) is a diagram showing the "Coal Sack" as a "vacant lane" running quite through and across the successive spiral extensions laterally of the galaxy, without any reference or a word of explanation that such features, of which there are many, really demonstrate the untenability of such extension.
An even more original and extremely interesting part of Mr. See's work is his very satisfactory solution of the hitherto unsolved geological problem of the origin of all the great mountain ranges of the world, in Chapters X., XI., and XII. of Mr. Webb's volume. It seems quite complete except for the beginnings, but I suppose it is a result of the formation of the earth by accretion and not by expulsion, by heating and not by cooling....—Yours very truly,
D R. WALLACE.