To John Lubbock 6 November 1881
Down, | Beckenham, Kent. | (Railway Station | Orpington. S.E.R.)
Novr. 6th 1881
My dear Lubbock
If I had written your address (but this requires a fearful stretch of imagination on my part), I shd. not alter what I had said about Hicks.1 You have the support of the Pres. Geolog. Soc,2 & I think that Hicks is more likely to be right than Bonney.3 The latter seems to me to belong to the class of objectors general. If Hicks shd. be hereafter proved to be wrong about his third formation, it would signify very little to you.—
I forget whether you go as far as to support Ramsay about lakes as large as the Italian ones; if so, I would myself modify the passage a little, for these great lakes have always made me tremble for Ramsay, yet some of the American geologists support him about the still larger N. American Lakes.4 I have always believed in the main in Ramsay’s views from the date of publication, & argued the point with Lyell.5 I am convinced that it is a very interesting step in geology, & that you were quite right to allude to it.—
Ever yours sincerely | Ch. Darwin
Footnotes
Bibliography
Etheridge, Robert. 1881. Anniversary address. Proceedings of Geological Society of London 37: 37–235.
Lubbock, John. 1881a. President’s address. Report of the 51st Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, held at York (1881): 1–51.
Lyell, Charles. 1865. Elements of geology, or the ancient changes of the earth and its inhabitants as illustrated by geological monuments. 6th edition, revised. London: John Murray.
Ramsay, Andrew Crombie. 1862. On the glacial origin of certain lakes in Switzerland, the Black Forest, Great Britain, Sweden, North America, and elsewhere. [Read 5 March 1862.] Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London 18: 185–204.
Summary
Supports the statements on Henry Hicks in JL’s address.
Bonney is an "objector general".
CD has always supported A. C. Ramsay.
Letter details
- Letter no.
- DCP-LETT-13463
- From
- Charles Robert Darwin
- To
- John Lubbock, 4th baronet and 1st Baron Avebury
- Sent from
- Down
- Source of text
- The British Library (Add MS 49645: 104–5)
- Physical description
- ALS 3pp
Please cite as
Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 13463,” accessed on 20 April 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-13463.xml