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so.) I think we had better do nothing: to try in earnest to get a great
naturalist into the Athenaeum and fail, is far worse than doing nothing.
How strange, funny, and disgraceful that nearly all (Faraday and Sir J.
Herschel at least exceptions) our great men are in quarrels in couplets;
it never struck me before...
LETTER 47. C. LYELL TO CHARLES DARWIN.
(47/1. In the "Life and Letters," II., page 72, is given a letter (June
16th, 1856) to Lyell, in which Darwin exhales his indignation over
the "extensionists" who created continents ad libitum to suit the
convenience of their theories. On page 74 a fuller statement of his
views is given in a letter dated June 25th. We have not seen Lyell's
reply to this, but his reply to Darwin's letter of June 16th is extant,
and is here printed for the first time.)
53, Harley Street, London, June 17th, 1856.
I wonder you did not also mention D. Sharpe's paper (47/2. "On the Last
Elevation of the Alps, etc." ("Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc." Volume XII.,
1856, page 102.), just published, by which the Alps were submerged
as far as 9,000 feet of their present elevation above the sea in the
Glacial period and then since uplifted again. Without admitting this,
you would probably convey the alpine boulders to the Jura by marine
currents, and if so, make the Alps and Jura islands in the glacial sea.
And would not the Glacial theory, as now very generally understood,
immerse as much of Europe as I did in my original map of Europe, when I
simply expressed all the area which at some time or other had been under
water since the commencement of the Eocene period? I almost suspect the
glacial submergence would exceed it.
But would not this be a measure of the movement in every other
area, northern (arctic), antarctic, or tropical, during an equal
period--oceanic or continental? For the conversion of sea into land
would always equal the turning of much land into sea.
But all this would be done in a fraction of the Pliocene period; the
Glacial shells are barely 1 per cent. extinct species. Multiply this by
the older Pliocene and Miocene epochs.
You also forget an author 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, so
that they all just rose to the surface at one level, or their sites are
marked by buoys of coral. I could never feel sure whether he meant
this tremendous catastrophe, all brought about by what Sedgwick called
"Lyell's niggling operations," to have been effected during the era of
existing species of corals. Perhaps you can tell me, for I am really
curious to know...(47/3. The author referred to is of course Darwin.)
Now, although there is nothing in my works to warrant the building up
of continents in the Atlantic and Pacific even since the Eocene period,
yet, as some of the rocks in the central Alps are in part Eocene, I
begin to think that all continents and oceans may be chiefly, if not
all, post-Eocene, and Dana's "Atlantic Ocean" of the Lower Silurian is
childish (see the Anniversary Address, 1856). (47/4. Probably Dana's
Anniversary Address to the "American Association for the Advancement of
Science," published in the "Proceedings" 1856.) But how far you are at
liberty to call up continents from "the vasty deep" as often as you
want to convey a Helix from the United States to Europe in Miocene or
Pliocene periods is a question; for the ocean is getting deeper of late,
and Haughton says the mean depth is eleven miles! by his late paper
on tides. (47/5. "On the Depth of the Sea deducible from Tidal
Observations" ("Proc. Irish Acad." Volume VI., page 354, 1853-54).) I
shall be surprised if this turns out true by soundings.
I thought your mind was expanding so much in regard to time that
you would have been going ahead in regard to the possibility of
mountain-chains being created in a fraction of the period required to
convert a swan into a goose, or vice versa. Nine feet did the Rimutaka
chain of New Zealand gain in height in January, 1855, and a great
earthquake has occurred in New Zealand every seven years for half
a century nearly. The "Washingtonia" (Californian conifer) (47/6.
Washingtonia, or Wellingtonia, better known as Sequoia. Asa Gray,
writing in 1872, states his belief that "no Sequoia now alive can
sensibly antedate the Christian era" ("Scientific Papers," II., page
144).) lately exhibited was four thousand years old, so that one
individual might see a chain of hills rise, and rise with it, much
[more] a species--and those islands which J. Hooker describes as covered
with New Zealand plants three hundred (?) miles to the N.E. (?) of New
Zealand may have been separated from the mainland two or three or four
generations of Washingtonia ago.
If the identity of the land-shells of all the hundreds of British Isles
be owing to their having been united since the Glacial period, and the
discordance, almost total, of the shells of Porto Santo and Madeira be
owing to their having been separated [during] all the newer and possibly
older Pliocene periods, then it gives us a conception of time which will
aid you much in your conversion of species, if immensity of time will do
all you require; for the Glacial period is thus shown, as we might have
anticipated, to be contemptible in duration or in distance from us,
as compared to the older Pliocene, let alone the Miocene, when our
contemporary species were, though in a minority, already beginning to
flourish.
The littoral shells, according to MacAndrew, imply that Madeira and the
Canaries were once joined to the mainland of Europe or Africa, but that
those isles were disjoined so long ago that most of the species came
in since. In short, the marine shells tell the same story as the land
shells. Why do the plants of Porto Santo and Madeira agree so nearly?
And why do the shells which are the same as European or African species
remain quite unaltered, like the Crag species, which returned unchanged
to the British seas after being expelled from them by glacial cold,
when two millions (?) of years had elapsed, and after such migration to
milder seas? Be so good as to explain all this in your next letter.
LETTER 48. TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, July 5th [1856].
I write this morning in great tribulation about Tristan d'Acunha. (48/1.
See "Flora Antarctica," page 216. Though Tristan d'Acunha is "only 1,000
miles distant from the Cape of Good Hope, and 3,000 from the Strait of
Magalhaens, the botany of this island is far more intimately allied to
that of Fuegia than Africa.") The more I reflect on your Antarctic flora
the more I am astounded. You give all the facts so clearly and fully,
that it is impossible to help speculating on the subject; but it drives
me to despair, for I cannot gulp down your continent; and not being able
to do so gives, in my eyes, the multiple creationists an awful triumph.
It is a wondrous c |