return: you may guess how much pleasure it gave me; some of his woodcuts
came so exactly into play that I have only to refer to them instead of
redrawing similar ones. I had my barometer with me, I only wish I had used
it more in these plains. The valley of S. Cruz appears to me a very
curious one; at first it quite baffled me. I believe I can show good
reasons for supposing it to have been once a northern straits like to that
of Magellan. When I return to England you will have some hard work in
winnowing my Geology; what little I know I have learnt in such a curious
fashion that I often feel very doubtful about the number of grains [of
value?]. Whatever number they may turn out, I have enjoyed extreme
pleasure in collecting them. In T. del Fuego I collected and examined some
corallines; I have observed one fact which quite startled me: it is that
in the genus Sertularia (taken in its most restricted form as [used] by
Lamoureux) and in two species which, excluding comparative expressions, I
should find much difficulty in describing as different, the polypi quite
and essentially differed in all their most important and evident parts of
structure. I have already seen enough to be convinced that the present
families of corallines as arranged by Lamarck, Cuvier, etc., are highly
artificial. It appears that they are in the same state [in] which shells
were when Linnaeus left them for Cuvier to rearrange. I do so wish I was a
better hand at dissecting, I find I can do very little in the minute parts
of structure; I am forced to take a very rough examination as a type for
different classes of structure. It is most extraordinary I can nowhere see
in my books one single description of the polypus of any one coralline
excepting Alcyonium Lobularia of Savigny. I found a curious little stony
Cellaria (5/1. Cellaria, a genus of Bryozoa, placed in the section
Flustrina of the Suborder Chilostomata.) (a new genus) each cell provided
with long toothed bristle, these are capable of various and rapid motions.
This motion is often simultaneous, and can be produced by irritation. This
fact, as far as I can see, is quite isolated in the history of zoophytes