ieties, and next
year, if you are able, testing the power of endurance of only the most
promising kind. If it were possible it would be very advisable for you
to get some grown on the wet western side of Ireland. If you succeed
in procuring a fungus-proof variety you may rely on it that its merits
would soon become known locally and it would afterwards spread rapidly
far and wide. Mr. Caird gave me a striking instance of such a case in
Scotland. I return home to-morrow morning.

I have the pleasure to enclose a cheque for 100 pounds. If you receive a
Government grant, I ought to be repaid.

P.S. If I were in your place I would not expend any labour or money in
publishing what you have already done, or in sending seeds or tubers to
any one. I would work quietly on till some sure results were obtained.
And these would be so valuable that your work in this case would soon be
known. I would also endeavour to pass as severe a judgment as possible
on the state of the tubers and plants.

LETTER 285. TO E. VON MOJSISOVICS. Down, June 1st, 1878.

I have at last found time to read [the] first chapter of your "Dolomit
Riffe" (285/1. "Dolomitriffe Sudtirols und Venetiens." Wien, 1878.), and
have been exceedingly interested by it. What a wonderful change in
the future of geological chronology you indicate, by assuming the
descent-theory to be established, and then taking the graduated changes
of the same group of organisms as the true standard! I never hoped to
live to see such a step even proposed by any one. (285/2. Published in
"Life and Letters," III., pages 234, 235.)

Nevertheless, I saw dimly that each bed in a formation could contain
only the organisms proper to a certain depth, and to other there
existing conditions, and that all the intermediate forms between one
marine species and another could rarely be preserved in the same
place and bed. Oppel, Neumayr, and yourself will confer a lasting and
admirable service on the noble science of Geology, if you can spread
your views so as to be generally known and accepted.

With respect to the continental and oceanic periods common to the whole
northern hemisphere, to which you refer, I have sometimes speculated
that the present distribution of the land and sea over the world may
have formerly been very different to what it now is; and that new genera
and families may have been developed on the shores of isolated tracts in
the south, and afterwards spread to the north.