ora of true type.) If this land existed, it did
not extend to America, for the fossils of the Miocene of America
are representative and not identical. Where, then, was the edge or
coast-line of it, Atlantic-wards? Look at the form and constancy of the
great fucus-bank, and consider that it is a Sargassum bank, and that
the Sargassum there is in an abnormal condition, and that the species
of this genus of fuci are essentially ground-growers, and then see the
probability of this bank having originated on a line of ancient coast.

Now, having thus argued independently, first on my flora and second on
the geological evidences of land in the quarter required, I put the two
together to bear up my Irish case.

I cannot admit the Sargassum case to be parallel with that of Confervae
or Oscillatoria.

I think I have evidence from the fossils of the boulder formations in
Ireland that if such Miocene land existed it must have been broken up or
partially broken up at the epoch of the glacial or boulder period.

All objections thankfully received.

Ever most sincerely,

EDWARD FORBES.

LETTER 21. TO L. JENYNS (BLOMEFIELD). Down. [1846].

I am much obliged for your note and kind intended present of your
volume. (21/1. No doubt the late Mr. Blomefield's "Observations in
Natural History." See "Life and Letters," II., page 31.) I feel sure I
shall like it, for all discussions and observations on what the world
would call trifling points in Natural History always appear to me very
interesting. In such foreign periodicals as I have seen, there are no
such papers as White, or Waterton, or some few other naturalists in
Loudon's and Charlesworth's Journal, would have written; and a great
loss it has always appeared to me. I should have much liked to have met
you in London, but I cannot leave home, as my wife is recovering from
a rather sharp fever attack, and I am myself slaving to finish my S.
American Geology (21/2. "Geological Observations in South America"
(London), 1846.), of which, thanks to all Plutonic powers, two-thirds
are through the press, and then I shall feel a comparatively free man.
Have you any thoughts of Southampton? (21/3. The British Association
met at Southampton in 1846.) I have some vague idea of going there, and
should much enjoy meeting you.

LETTER 22. TO J.D. HOOKER. Shrewsbury [end of February 1846].

I came here on account of my father's health, which has been sadly
failing of late, but to my grea