. . .I thank you very sincerely for your most captivating general work on the "Principles of Zoology." I am quite in love with it. I was glad to find that you had arranged the nummulites with the tertiary rocks, so that the broad generalization I attempted in my last work on the Alps, Apennines, and Carpathians is completely sustained zoologically, and you will not be sorry to see the stratigraphical truth vindicated (versus E. de Beaumont and—). I beseech you to look at my memoir, and especially at my reasoning about the miocene and pliocene divisions of the Alps and Italy. It seems to me manifest that the percentage system derived from marine life can never be applied to tertiary TERRESTRIAL successions. . .
My friends have congratulated me much on this my last effort, and as Lyell and others most interested in opposing me have been forward in approval, I begin to hope that I am not yet quite done up; and that unlike the Bishop of Oviedo, my last sermon "ne sent pas de l'apoplexie." I have, nevertheless, been desperately out of sorts and full of gout and liver and all kinds of irritation this summer, which is the first for many a long year in which I have been unable to take the field. The meeting at Birmingham, however, revived me. Professor W. Rogers will have told you all about our doings. Buckland is up to his neck in "sewage," and wishes to change all underground London into a fossil cloaca of pseudo coprolites. This does not quite suit the chemists charged with sanitary responsibilities; for they fear the Dean will poison half the population in preparing his choice manures! But in this as in everything he undertakes there is a grand sweeping view.
When are we to meet again? And when are we to have a "stand-up fight" on the erratics of the Alps? You will see by the abstract of my memoir appended to my Alpine affair that I have taken the field against the extension of the Jura! In a word, I do not believe that great trunk glaciers ever filled the valleys of the Rhone, etc. Perhaps you will be present at our next meeting of the British Association at Edinburgh, August, 1850. Olim meminisse juvabit! and then, my dear and valued and most enlightened friend, we may study once more together the surface of my native rocks for "auld lang syne.". . .
FROM CHARLES DARWIN.
DOWN, FARNBOROUGH, KENT, June 15 [1850, probably].
MY DEAR SIR,
I have seldom been more deeply gratified than by receiving your most kind present of "Lake Superior." I had heard of it, and had much wished to read it, but I confess it was the very great honor of having in my possession a work with your autograph, as a presentation copy, that has given me such lively and sincere pleasure. I cordially thank you for it. I have begun to read it with uncommon interest, which I see will increase as I go on.
The Cirripedia, which you and Dr. Gould were so good as to send me, have proved of great service to me. The sessile species from Massachusetts consist of five species. . .Of the genus Balanus, on the shores of Britain, we have ONE species (B. perforata Bruguiere), which you have not in the United States, in the same way as you exclusively have B. eburneus. All the above species attain a somewhat larger average size on the shores of the United States than on those of Britain, but the specimens from the glacial beds of Uddevalla, Scotland, and Canada, are larger even than those of the United States.
Once again allow me to thank you with cordiality for the pleasure you have given me.
Believe me, with the highest respect, your truly obliged,