Ɛpsilon

From Daniel Mackintosh   15 January 1880

36 Whitford Road | Tranmere, | Birkenhead,

15th Jan. 1880

Dear Sir,

I send a syllabus of a paper I am about forwarding to the Geological Society.1 I can easily understand how the retreat of the sea may have left the terraces of Patagonia,2 while in this neighbourhood the sinking of the land was the cause of the submergence. But I have not made any positive assertions on the subject.

I find from your paper in the Phil. Magazine that you were the first to notice the proofs of the violent stranding of floating ice, which I cannot but regard as the most remarkable of all the Moel Tryfan phenomena.3 I have made use of the term “violent impact” &c in my paper.

diagram

Clay above all—parcels of clay rolled up in sand,—& parcels of slate chips rolled up in sand.

With many thanks for the letters with which you have honoured me,4 | I am, Dear Sir, | Yours very truly, | D Mackintosh

1
The syllabus has not been found. Mackintosh’s paper on the Moel Tryfan deposits in Wales was published in the Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London (Mackintosh 1881).
2
In ‘Distribution of the erratic boulders’, CD discussed the submarine origin of terraces in the valley of Santa Cruz, Patagonia.
3
CD’s paper, ‘Ancient glaciers of Caernarvonshire’, was published in the Philosophical Magazine in 1842; it described deposits on Moel Tryfan (a mountain in Wales) as shattered and rounded by icebergs grating over the surface (ibid., p. 144).
4
CD had praised Mackintosh’s paper on erratic boulders (Mackintosh 1879; see Correspondence vol. 27, letters to Daniel Mackintosh, 9 October 1879 and 16 October 1879).

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-12426,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-12426