Summary

CL would like to put Joachim Barrande on the Royal Society’s foreign list. Of French geologists and palaeontologists, he is the man who has made the greatest sacrifices and produced the greatest results.

Summary

"I could think of nothing for days after your lesson on coral reefs, but of the top of submerged continents. It is all true, but do not flatter youself that you will be believed, till you are growing bald, like me, with hard work & vexation at the incredulity in the world."

Summary

Saw Salter’s Spirifer specimens; a very good proof of indefinite modifiability.

Beginning to think gap between Cambrian and Lower Silurian enormous.

Édouard Lartet to give paper before Geological Society ["On coexistence of man with certain extinct quadrupeds", Q. J. Geol. Soc. Lond. 16 (1859–60): 471–5].

Summary

Discusses the possibility of a land-bridge connecting Biscay with Ireland and the consequent occurrence in southern Ireland of Asturian plants which are absent from England.

Asks if Hooker or anyone has criticised Edward Forbes’ botanical migration of five floras in the British Isles ["On the connexion between the distribution of existing fauna and flora of the British Isles, and the geological changes which have affected their area", Mem. Geol. Surv. G. B. 1 (1846): 336–432].

Summary

Defends position he takes on species [in Antiquity of man]. CD overestimates CL’s capacity to influence public. Will not dogmatise on descent of man; prepared to accept it, but it "takes away much of the charm from my speculations on the past". Cannot go to Huxley’s length with regard to natural selection. Responds to CD’s comments on Antiquity of man.

Summary

CD forgets an author [CD himself in Coral reefs] "who, by means of atolls, contrived to submerge archipelagoes (or continents?), the mountains of which must originally have differed from each other in height 8,000 (or 10,000?) feet".

CL begins to think that all continents and oceans are chiefly post-Eocene, but he admits that it is questionable how far one is at liberty to call up continents "to convey a Helix from the United States to Europe in Miocene or Pliocene periods".

Will CD explain why the land and marine shells of Porto Santo and Madeira differ while the plants so nearly agree?

Summary

Express their concern that the offer for sale to the British Museum, by G. A. Mantell and Thomas Hawkins, of two valuable collections, has been declined.