t true; my only doubt
is, that in a much disturbed country, I should have thought that some
depressions, and consequently lakes, would almost certainly have been
left. I suggested a careful consideration of mountainous tropical
countries such as Brazil, peninsula of India, etc.; if lakes are there,
[they are] very rare. I should fully subscribe to Ramsay's views.

What presumption, as it seems to me, in the Council of Geological
Society that it hesitated to publish the paper.

We return home on the 30th. I have made up [my] mind, if I can keep up
my courage, to start on the Saturday for Cambridge, and stay the last
few days of the [British] Association there. I do so hope that you may
be there then.

LETTER 504. TO J.D. HOOKER. November 3rd [1864].

When I wrote to you I had not read Ramsay. (504/1. "On the Erosion
of Valleys and Lakes: a Reply to Sir Roderick Murchison's Anniversary
Address to the Geographical Society." "Phil. Mag." Volume XXVIII., page
293, 1864) How capitally it is written! It seems that there is nothing
for style like a man's dander being put up. I think I agree largely with
you about denudation--but the rocky-lake-basin theory is the part
which interests me at present. It seems impossible to know how much to
attribute to ice, running water, and sea. I did not suppose that Ramsay
would deny that mountains had been thrown up irregularly, and that the
depressions would become valleys. The grandest valleys I ever saw were
at Tahiti, and here I do not believe ice has done anything; anyhow there
were no erratics. I said in my S. American Geology (504/2. "Finally, the
conclusion at which I have arrived with respect to the relative powers
of rain, and sea-water on the land is, that the latter is by far the
most efficient agent, and that its chief tendency is to widen the
valleys, whilst torrents and rivers tend to deepen them and to remove
the wreck of the sea's destroying action" ("Geol. Observations," pages
66, 67).) that rivers deepen and the sea widens valleys, and I am
inclined largely to stick to this, adding ice to water. I am sorry to
hear that Tyndall has grown dogmatic. H. Wedgwood was saying the
other day that T.'s writings and speaking gave him the idea of intense
conceit. I hope it is not so, for he is a grand man of science.

...I have had a prospectus and letter from Andrew Murray (504/3. See
Volume II., Letters 379, 384, etc.) asking me for suggestions. I think
this almost shows he i