e-read your Galapagos paper, and to my taste it
is quite admirable: I see in it some of the points which I thought best
in A. De Candolle! Such is my memory.

Lyell will not express any opinion on continental extensions. (326/3.
See Letters 47, 48.)

LETTER 327. TO C. LYELL. Down, July 8th [1856].

Very many thanks for your two notes, and especially for Maury's map:
also for books which you are going to lend me.

I am sorry you cannot give any verdict on continental extensions; and
I infer that you think my argument of not much weight against such
extensions; I know I wish I could believe. (327/1. This paragraph is
published in the "Life and Letters," II., page 78; it refers to a letter
(June 25th, 1856, "Life and Letters," II., page 74) giving Darwin's
arguments against the doctrine of "Continental Extension." See Letters
47, 48.)

I have been having a look at Maury (which I once before looked at),
and in respect to Madeira & Co. I must say, that the chart seems to me
against land-extension explaining the introduction of organic beings.
Madeira, the Canaries and Azores are so tied together, that I should
have thought they ought to have been connected by some bank, if changes
of level had been connected with their organic relation. The Azores
ought, too, to have shown more connection with America. I had sometimes
speculated whether icebergs could account for the greater number
of European plants and their more northern character on the Azores,
compared with Madeira; but it seems dangerous until boulders are found
there. (327/2. See "Life and Letters," II., page 112, for a letter
(April 26th, 1858) in which Darwin exults over the discovery of
boulders on the Azores and the fulfilment of the prophecy, which he was
characteristically half inclined to ascribe to Lyell.)

One of the more curious points in Maury is, as it strikes me, in the
little change which about 9,000 feet of sudden elevation would make
in the continent visible, and what a prodigious change 9,000 feet
subsidence would make! Is the difference due to denudation during
elevation? Certainly 12,000 feet elevation would make a prodigious
change. I have just been quoting you in my essay on ice carrying seeds
in the southern hemisphere, but this will not do in all the cases. I
have had a week of such hard labour in getting up the relations of all
the Antarctic flora from Hooker's admirable works. Oddly enough, I have
just finished in great detail, giving