From T. F. Jamieson 24 October 1861
Ellon Aberdeensh.
24 Oct 1861
My Dear Sir,
It would be unpardonable in me not to thank you for the valuable papers &c on Glen Roy which you have been so good as send me—1
I found the locality so interesting & instructive that I hope to be able to pay another visit to it.2 I saw Loch Spey from a distance standing on the top of Tom Brahn,3 or rather endeavouring to stand, for it was a gale like to blow the teeth out of one’s head— Possibly the high lying terraces or buttresses you refer to, may be explained by glacial action, for it seems, from Dr. Hooker’s account, that similar terraces abound in the higher Himalayan valleys, wh. he refers to that agency— Lakes, he says, form between the sides of glaciers & the flanking hill occasionally—4
—The great sloping terraces at the mouth of Glen Spean I did not get examined, & am therefore unable to say much about, but if the ice-dam in that direction consisted of a glacier stream occupying the line of the Caledonian canal, great accumulations might be pushed into the dammed lake by short glaciers descending from the little hollows of Ben Nevis &c. & the hill streams of ditto
One of the greatest difficulties in the way of the glacier theory seems to me to arise from the supposition of the pressure of a column of water say 600 feet or so deep or more, being retained by an ice barrier. the glacier lakes of Switzerland seem to be retained chiefly by moraine matter, but in one case by ice alone— in the Himalaya near Karakorum pass also a large glacier lake—the largest I have heard of—seems to have been dammed by ice alone5
I am | My Dear Sir | Yours very faithfully | Thos. F. Jamieson
C. Darwin Esq
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.
Correspondence: The correspondence of Charles Darwin. Edited by Frederick Burkhardt et al. 29 vols to date. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1985–.
Jamieson, Thomas Francis. 1863. On the parallel roads of Glen Roy, and their place in the history of the glacial period. [Read 21 January 1863.] Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London 19: 235–59.
Summary
Discusses his observations at Glen Roy. Mentions glaciers seen by Hooker in the Himalayas. Discusses problems of glacier–lake theory.
Letter details
- Letter no.
- DCP-LETT-3297
- From
- Thomas Francis Jamieson
- To
- Charles Robert Darwin
- Sent from
- Ellon
- Source of text
- The University of Edinburgh Centre for Research Collections (Gen.112/2828-9)
- Physical description
- ALS 3pp
Please cite as
Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 3297,” accessed on 29 March 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-3297.xml
Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 9