To Charles Lyell [21? June 1848]1
Down Farnborough Kent
Wednesday
My dear Lyell
Out of justice to Chambers I must trouble you with one line to say, as far as I am personally concerned in Glen Roy he has made the amende honorable & pleads guilty thrugh inadvertency of taking my two lines of arguments & facts without acknowledgment. He concludes by saying he “came to the same point by an independent course of enquiry, which in a small degree excuses this inadvertency.” His letter altogether shows a very good disposition & says he is “much gratified with the measured approbation which you bestow &c”.— I am heartily glad I was able to say in truth that I thought he had done good service in calling more attention to the subject of the terraces.—
He protests it is unfair to call the sinking of the sea his theory, for that he with care always speaks of mere change of level & this is quite true, but the one section in which he shows how he conceives the sea might sink, is so astonishing that I believe it will with others, as with me, more than counterbalance his previous caution.— I hope that you may think better of the Book than I do.
Yours most truly | C. Darwin
Footnotes
Summary
Comments on apology by Chambers for using some of CD’s material without acknowledgment in discussing Glen Roy. His opinion of Chambers’ book [Ancient sea-margins (1848)].
Letter details
- Letter no.
- DCP-LETT-1181
- From
- Charles Robert Darwin
- To
- Charles Lyell, 1st baronet
- Sent from
- Down
- Source of text
- American Philosophical Society (Mss.B.D25.75)
- Physical description
- ALS 3pp
Please cite as
Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 1181,” accessed on 28 March 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-1181.xml
Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 4