Ɛpsilon

From Joseph Prestwich   2 January 1880

21 Park Crescent | Portland Place

2 Jany. 1880

My dear Mr. Darwin,

May I trouble you with two lines in explanation to set me right if I am wrong in my statement. In reviewing the history of the “Parallel Roads” I refer to your views, and relying on the opinion expressed by later writers, whom I suppose to have been in communication with you, I have stated that you have abandoned the “marine theory”— therefore finally committing myself to this statement I should be glad to hear that I am quite correct in doing so, or if I am to put it in any other form.1

With the best wishes of the season I am | My dear Mr. Darwin | Very truly your’s | Joseph Prestwich

1
In his 1839 paper ‘Parallel roads of Glen Roy’, CD argued that the three horizontal terraces across the steep sides of the valley in Lochaber were the remains of beaches formed by the sea as the landmass of Scotland rose in graduated steps. In an article on the parallel roads, Prestwich remarked: ‘the marine theory was brought forward with his usual power of illustration, but subsequently abandoned, by Darwin’ (Prestwich 1879, p. 665). CD had abandoned his theory when an alternative explanation involving glacial lakes was advanced by Thomas Francis Jamieson (see Correspondence vol. 9, letter to T. F. Jamieson, 6 September [1861], and Rudwick 1974). CD discussed his reasons for giving up the marine theory with Charles Lyell and John Tyndall, both of whom published on the geology of Glen Roy (see Correspondence vol. 10, letter to Charles Lyell, 14 October [1862], and Correspondence vol. 24, letter to John Tyndall, 5 June [1876]; see also Lyell 1873, p. 307, and Tyndall 1876, p. 238).

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-12394,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-12394