pleasure which it has given me.

For heaven's sake forgive the untidiness of this whole note.


LETTER 515. TO JOHN LUBBOCK [Lord Avebury].
Down, November 6th, 1881.

If I had written your Address (515/1. Address delivered by Lord Avebury as
President of the British Association at York in 1881. Dr. Hicks is
mentioned as having classed the pre-Cambrian strata in "four great groups
of immense thickness and implying a great lapse of time" and giving no
evidence of life. Hicks' third formation was named by him the Arvonian
("Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc." Volume XXXVII., 1881, Proc., page 55.) (but
this requires a fearful stretch of imagination on my part) I should not
alter what I had said about Hicks. You have the support of the President
[of the] Geological Society (515/2. Robert Etheridge.), and I think that
Hicks is more likely to be right than X. The latter seems to me to belong
to the class of objectors general. If Hicks should be hereafter proved to
be wrong about this third formation, it would signify very little to you.

I forget whether you go as far as to support Ramsay about lakes as large as
the Italian ones: if so, I would myself modify the passage a little, for
these great lakes have always made me tremble for Ramsay, yet some of the
American geologists support him about the still larger N. American lakes.
I have always believed in the main in Ramsay's views from the date of
publication, and argued the point with Lyell, and am convinced that it is a
very interesting step in Geology, and that you were quite right to allude
to it. (515/3. "Glacial Origin of Lakes in Switzerland, Black Forest,
etc." ("Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc." Volume XVIII., pages 185-204, 1862).