To Charles Lyell   [7 March 1847]

Down Farnborough Kent

Sunday

My dear Lyell

I returned home on Friday night & found here your present of your work;1 I am very much obliged for it & now that I have it, I may say I am extremely glad that it is not merely a loan, as there is, I can perceive, much new which I shall want to refer to.— You have, not, however, sent the list of the new parts, as you promised, which I shd be glad of,2 as I have not time at present to read it through; amongst other reasons Stokes3 having lent me the Annales des Sc. in 30 vols, which I must soon wade through.—4

I suppose you have commenced in earnest on your American work;5 I had hoped to have seen you in passing through London but I had a good deal to do, & have lately had much unwellness.— — I got R. Chambers to give me a sketch of Milne’s Glen Roy views6 & I have reread my paper,7 & am now, that I have heard what is to be said, not even staggered. It is provoking & humiliating to find that Chambers not only had not read with any care my paper on this subject or even looked at the coloured map, so that the new shelf, described by me,8 had not been searched for, & my arguments & facts of detail not in the least attended to.— I entirely gave up the ghost & was quite chicken-hearted at the Geolog. Soc., till you reassured me, & reminded me of the main facts in the whole case.—

I heartily hope the new Edit. of the Principles will have a large sale; my S. America has had an enormous sale according to my notions, 100 copies having been sold. By the way if you will send me the list of your additions, I will copy it (not lending it to anyone) & return the original to you.

My visit to Shrewsbury was rather a melancholy one, for though I found my Father better, he is much changed bodily during the last six months.

Farewell, my dear Lyell, with many thanks for your present. Yours ever | C. Darwin

1
C. Lyell 1847. CD’s copy is in the Darwin Library–CUL.
2
Tipped into CD’s copy of C. Lyell 1847 is a manuscript list of page numbers, in an unknown hand. The list is headed, ‘Additions & Alterations Principles of Geology 7th. Edn.’ in Lyell’s hand.
4
In CD’s reading notebook (DAR 119; Correspondence vol. 4, Appendix IV), he recorded on 25 December 1845: Annales des Sciences Nat Tom 1. to 30 (1s t series) —— 3d. series. Bot & Zoolog. to end of Tom VI.— On 3 April 1847, he wrote: ‘Annal. des Sc. Nat: Second Series, *all Tom I [interl] to Tom. XX’ (DAR 119; Correspondence vol. 4, Appendix IV). The abstracts that CD made of his reading of these volumes are in DAR 72 and 74.
5
C. Lyell 1849, an account of Lyell’s second visit to the United States of America during 1845 and 1846.
6
David Milne had read the first part of a paper to the Royal Society of Edinburgh on 1 March 1847 in which he argued that the roads marked the ancient beaches of a lake that had formed after detritus blocked the foot of Glen Roy (Milne 1847b).
7
‘Observations on the parallel roads of Glen Roy’, Collected papers 1: 87–137.
8
CD refers to a shelf near the hamlet of Kilfinnin (see Collected papers 1: 92, 94–5).

Manuscript Alterations and Comments

2.2 seen] before omitted point
2.6 had] above del ‘did’
2.6 read with any care] above del ‘know’
2.7 coloured] interl
2.8 searched] above del ‘looked’
3.3 additions,] ‘s,’ added

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-1070,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-1070