To James Croll 6 February [1869]1
Down. | Bromley. | Kent. S.E.
Feb 6
My dear Sir
I am very much obliged for your long &, to me, extremely interesting letter. It is consolatory to me that you are enclined to give a little more age to the world.2
I read Mr Moseley’s article in “Scientific Opinion” about 3 or 4 weeks ago; I have had the house searched but cannot find the copy. The article was given as extracted from the Proc. Royal Soc., but I have looked in the two last numbers which I have received, & it is not in them. Hence I suppose the author or Secy. sent an abstract beforehand, & I suppose it will appear in the next number of the proceedings.3 The article interested me, though I could not follow all the reasonings, as I hear he is a sound man.
I was reminded of my crude notion that the cause of elevations, volcanic phenomena &c was cosmical, by my son telling me about Capt Clark’s paper in Phil. Trans. (which you probably know) on the globe being a little flattened at the equator, & that this stands in relation to relative position of continents & oceans.4
It wd be a great gain if someone could shew a cause of the many changes of level in the crust of the earth.
With very sincere thanks | believe me | yours very faithfully | Charles Darwin
Footnotes
Bibliography
Collected papers: The collected papers of Charles Darwin. Edited by Paul H. Barrett. 2 vols. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press. 1977.
‘Volcanic phenomena and the formation of mountain chains’: On the connexion of certain volcanic phenomena in South America; and on the formation of mountain chains and volcanos, as the effect of the same power by which continents are elevated. By Charles Darwin. [Read 7 March 1838.] Transactions of the Geological Society of London 2d ser. 5 (1840): 601–31. [Shorter publications, pp. 97–124.]
Summary
Consoling to CD that JC gives "a little more age to the world".
Cites article by Henry Moseley ["On the mechanical possibility of the descent of glaciers", Proc. R. Soc. Lond. 17 (1869): 202–8].
Mentions article by A. R. Clarke on shape of the globe.
Letter details
- Letter no.
- DCP-LETT-6603
- From
- Charles Robert Darwin
- To
- James Croll
- Sent from
- Down
- Source of text
- American Philosophical Society (Mss.B.D25.)
- Physical description
- LS(A) 4pp
Please cite as
Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 6603,” accessed on 28 September 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-6603.xml
Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 17