hus worn down? Surely he must forget
oscillation of level would be more potent one way or another during such
enormous lapses of time. It would be hard to believe any mountain range
has been so long stationary.

I suppose Lyell's book will soon be out. (358/2. "The Antiquity of Man,"
1863.) I was very glad to see in a newspaper that Murray sold 4,000.
What a sale!

I am now working on cultivated plants, and rather like my work; but I
am horribly afraid I make the rashest remarks on value of differences. I
trust to a sort of instinct, and, God knows, can seldom give any reason
for my remarks. Lord, in what a medley the origin of cultivated plants
is. I have been reading on strawberries, and I can find hardly two
botanists agree what are the wild forms; but I pick out of horticultural
books here and there queer cases of variation, inheritance, etc., etc.

What a long letter I have scribbled; but you must forgive me, for it is
a great pleasure thus talking to you.

Did you ever hear of "Condy's Ozonised Water"? I have been trying
it with, I think, extraordinary advantage--to comfort, at least. A
teaspoon, in water, three or four times a day. If you meet any poor
dyspeptic devil like me, suggest it.

LETTER 359. TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, 26th [March 1863].

I hope and think you are too severe on Lyell's early chapters. Though
so condensed, and not well arranged, they seemed to me to convey with
uncommon force the antiquity of man, and that was his object. (359/1.
"The Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man": London, 1863.) It
did not occur to me, but I fear there is some truth in your criticism,
that nothing is to be trusted until he [Lyell] had observed it.

I am glad to see you stirred up about tropical plants during Glacial
period.

Remember that I have many times sworn to you that they coexisted; so,
my dear fellow, you must make them coexist. I do not think that greater
coolness in a disturbed condition of things would be required than the
zone of the Himalaya, in which you describe some tropical and temperate
forms commingling (359/2. "During this [the Glacial period], the coldest
point, the lowlands under the equator, must have been clothed with a
mingled tropical and temperate vegetation, like that described by Hooker
as growing luxuriantly at the height of from four to five thousand feet
on the lower slopes of the Himalaya, but with perhaps a still greater
preponderance of temperate forms" ("Origin of