Volume 1

More letters of Charles Darwin : a record of his work in a series of hitherto unpublished letters / edited by Francis Darwin ... and A.C. Seward.

  • Darwin, Charles, 1809-1882.
Date:
1903
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: More letters of Charles Darwin : a record of his work in a series of hitherto unpublished letters / edited by Francis Darwin ... and A.C. Seward. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    fit to travel home I know not. I most sincerely hope that Letter 350 Mrs. Huxley keeps up pretty well. The work which most men have to do is a blessing to them in such cases as yours. God bless you. Sir H. Holland came here to see her, and was wonder¬ fully kind. To C. Lyell. Letter 351 Down, Nov. 20th [i860]. I quite agree in admiration of Forbes’ Essay,1 yet, on my life, I think it has done, in some respects, as much mischief as good. Those who believe in vast continental extensions will never investigate means of distribution. Good heavens, look at Heer’s map of Atlantis ! I thought his division and lines of travel of the British plants very wild, and with hardly any foundation. I quite agree with what you say of almost certainty of Glacial epoch having destroyed the Spanish saxifrages, etc., in Ireland.2 I remember well discussing this with Hooker ; and I suggested that a slightly different or more equable and humid climate might have allowed (with perhaps some extension of land) the plants in question to have grown along the entire western shores between Spain and Ireland, and that subse¬ quently they became extinct, except at the present points under an oceanic climate. The point of Devonshire now has a touch of the same character. I demur in this particular case to Forbes’ transportal by ice. The subject has rather gone out of my mind, and it is not worth looking to my MS. discussion on migration during the Glacial period ; but I remember that the distri¬ bution of mammalia, and the very regular relation of the Alpine plants to points due north (alluded to in Origin), seemed to indicate continuous land at close of Glacial period. 0 ■ To J. D. Hooker. Letter 352 Down, March 18th [1861]. I have been recalling my thoughts on the question whether the Glacial period affected the whole world con¬ temporaneously, or only one longitudinal belt after another. 1 Memoir of the Geolog. Survey of the United Kingdom, Vol. I., 1846. 2 See Letter 20.