resting. I feel sure that you have laid a broad and safe foundation for
all future work on Distribution. How interesting it will be to see
hereafter plants treated in strict relation to your views; and then all
insects, pulmonate molluscs and fresh-water fishes, in greater detail than
I suppose you have given to these lower animals. The point which has
interested me most, but I do not say the most valuable point, is your
protest against sinking imaginary continents in a quite reckless manner, as
was stated by Forbes, followed, alas, by Hooker, and caricatured by
Wollaston and [Andrew] Murray! By the way, the main impression that the
latter author has left on my mind is his utter want of all scientific
judgment. I have lifted up my voice against the above view with no avail,
but I have no doubt that you will succeed, owing to your new arguments and
the coloured chart. Of a special value, as it seems to me, is the
conclusion that we must determine the areas, chiefly by the nature of the
mammals. When I worked many years ago on this subject, I doubted much
whether the now-called Palaearctic and Nearctic regions ought to be
separated; and I determined if I made another region that it should be
Madagascar. I have, therefore, been able to appreciate your evidence on
these points. What progress Palaeontology has made during the last twenty
years! but if it advances at the same rate in the future, our views on the
migration and birthplace of the various groups will, I fear, be greatly
altered. I cannot feel quite easy about the Glacial period, and the
extinction of large mammals, but I must hope that you are right. I think
you will have to modify your belief about the difficulty of dispersal of
land molluscs; I was interrupted when beginning to experimentise on the
just hatched young adhering to the feet of ground-roosting birds. I differ
on one other point--viz. in the belief that there must have existed a
Tertiary Antarctic continent, from which various forms radiated to the
southern extremities of our present continents. But I could go on
scribbling forever. You have written, as I believe, a grand and memorable