My dear Sir,

You were good enough to send me the two volumes that you have just published.² I thank you excessively for them and propose to take them with me as my only reading matter on a short stay at the Schinznach Baths³ that I will make in a month’s time. In order not to preempt that pleasure, I have currently done no more than cast a quick glance through them. I have noted the general plan and would like to take this opportunity to thank you for the attention that you were kind enough to pay to my Geographie botanique from the point of view of the origin of cultivated species.⁴ You will, no doubt, have supplemented and corrected me on many points. I congratulate you on having completed this enterprise in spite of the precarious state of your health. Like my colleague Dr Claparède, you are an example of the independence of the cerebral system from the rest of the organism,⁵ unlike those of us among the great majority of men, who feel our abilities decline at the least physical discomfort. This is a very happy thing for science.

Our geologists have been occupied for some days now with the discovery of bones and tools from the Stone Age in an area on the outskirts of Geneva that has been traversed thousands of times. It consists of quarries which have been exploited for a long time, at the foot of the Salève, 4 English miles from Geneva, on a route taken by every walker.⁶ Small stone axes, some with animal designs, are found here in abundance, and the bones of reindeer, dog, marmot, etc. Sands like those from the river Arve⁷ indicate a post-glacial epoch, but one which, in my opinion, is still ancient, for the level of the Arve is much lower, and fairly distant. My impression is that the disappearance of the glaciers from our valley of Lake Geneva occurred well before the historical epoch, but there is no standard of time measurement for such phenomena. M^r Favre, who has just published a large work (3 vols. and atlas) on the geology of the Savoy, the fruit of 30 years of research, has studied these questions carefully and is not as inclined as I am to extend the glacial epoch back in time.⁸ One must hope that proof of the time that has elapsed will be found one day.

The publisher Lovell ought to have sent you on my behalf a copy of the English translation he published of my little treatise on the Laws of botanical nomenclature.⁹ I asked him to do so. In this work, I am in complete agreement with English botanists and with the leading French botanists. There are other viewpoints in Germany and Sweden, and this is very much what made me decide to set out my reasons.¹⁰