My dear Sir

I have read all your work with much interest; I think you have done a real good service to Geology in calling attention to your sea margins & comprehending them under one general point of view.—² Your work must have been very expensive; with all the surveys & illustrations, & I sincerely hope the sale will return some part of your outlay. It is quite curious to me, how many of your sketches remind me of what I have seen in S. America.

I will first make some remarks on Glen Roy, which is a subject that has always interested me beyond perhaps its just merit, & about which I feel much a personal interest, for I sh^d have been more sorry to have been proved wrong on it, than upon almost any other subject. M^r Milne, as you know, at first staggered me in favour of the glacier view, but I had quite recovered that & had resumed my old state of positiveness.³ I [illeg] [illeg] M^r M wrong about bottom of valley All this, I think, has made me the more pleased with your coming to the same conclusion as I did. Your faint terraces above the lower one (No 4) in Glen Spean, is an important addition to the data. High mark. Kemp, Milne & especially yourself I have been surprised at your stating that the lines between 2 & 3 in Glen Roy “though not unknown to former observers, have not been by them thought worthy of serious notice”.⁴ Why this fact & its full bearings are most carefully pointed out by me at p. 61 where I remark that it “deserves particular attention” “perceiving its importance, I examined it with scrupulous care”. &c &c⁵ It was this case & the gradual thinning out of the lines round Bohuntine (as I have particularly described) which chiefly led me to the marine theory; for during my first two days I was a convert to the lacustrine theory.⁶ Your line argument is almost the same as the same with mine; for in the section of my P in T⁷ I go into detail p. 49 et seq on the terraces & mounds below shelf (4) in Glen Spean (& like such parts) & show, as I [consider] that if formed by the check given to river born detritus, at surface level slow retreat of the sea; an idea was a new one in those days.—⁸ You might have added another green patch, marking a land-strait, for the Kilfinnan terrace, which, is, as I have described on a dead level with one.—⁹ Have you not observed, (I did so) that where these level landstraits occur, (whether there are terraces or not) that there are generally slight buttresses on the sides above them; I have always thought this somewhat important. Such occur at the head of the Spey; I heartily wish you had worked out that point, for to my mind it is one of the most important points. Valleys of Gr Glen

So much for Glen Roy, which no doubt & very justly, you think subordinate in importance to the general question of the coincident levels of the shelves at distant points.