Huxley was in 1858 elected to the Athenaeum Club
under Rule 2, which provides for the annual election of "a certain
number of persons of distinguished eminence in science, literature, or
the arts, or for public services."), but I am inclined quite to agree
with you, and that we had better pause before anything is said...(N.B.
I found Falconer very indignant at the manner in which Huxley treated
Cuvier in his Royal Institution lectures; and I have gently told Huxley
so.) I think we had better do nothing: to try in earnest to get a great
naturalist into the Athenaeum and fail, is far worse than doing nothing.

How strange, funny, and disgraceful that nearly all (Faraday and Sir J.
Herschel at least exceptions) our great men are in quarrels in couplets;
it never struck me before...

LETTER 47. C. LYELL TO CHARLES DARWIN.

(47/1. In the "Life and Letters," II., page 72, is given a letter (June
16th, 1856) to Lyell, in which Darwin exhales his indignation over
the "extensionists" who created continents ad libitum to suit the
convenience of their theories. On page 74 a fuller statement of his
views is given in a letter dated June 25th. We have not seen Lyell's
reply to this, but his reply to Darwin's letter of June 16th is extant,
and is here printed for the first time.)

53, Harley Street, London, June 17th, 1856.

I wonder you did not also mention D. Sharpe's paper (47/2. "On the Last
Elevation of the Alps, etc." ("Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc." Volume XII.,
1856, page 102.), just published, by which the Alps were submerged
as far as 9,000 feet of their present elevation above the sea in the
Glacial period and then since uplifted again. Without admitting this,
you would probably convey the alpine boulders to the Jura by marine
currents, and if so, make the Alps and Jura islands in the glacial sea.
And would not the Glacial theory, as now very generally understood,
immerse as much of Europe as I did in my original map of Europe, when I
simply expressed all the area which at some time or other had been under
water since the commencement of the Eocene period? I almost suspect the
glacial submergence would exceed it.

But would not this be a measure of the movement in every other
area, northern (arctic), antarctic, or tropical, during an equal
period--oceanic or continental? For the conversion of sea into land
would always equal the turning of much land into sea.

But all this would be done in a fraction of the Pliocene per