Ɛpsilon

To T. M. Reade   9 December 1880

[6 Queen Anne Street,] London

Dec. 9th 1880

My dear Sir

I am sorry to say that I do not return home till middle of next week, & as I order no pamphlets to be forwarded to me by post, I cannot return the Geolog. Mag. until my return home.—1 Nor could my servants pick it out of the multitude which come by the Post. As I remarked in a letter to a friend, with whom I was discussing Wallace’s last book, the subject to which you refer seems to me a most perplexing one.2 The fact which I pointed out many years ago that all Oceanic islds are volcanic (except St. Paul’s, & now this is viewed by some as the nucleus of an ancient volcano) seems to me a strong argument that no continent ever occupied the great oceans.— Then there comes the statement from the Challenger that all sediment is deposited within 1 or 200 miles from the shores; though I shd. have thought this rather doubtful with respect to great rivers like the Amazons.—3

The Chalk formerly seemed to me best case of an Ocean having extended where a continent now stands, but it seems that some good judges deny that the chalk is an oceanic deposit.4 On the whole I lean to the side that continents have since Cambrian times occupied, approximately, their present positions.5 But as I have said the question seems a difficult one, & the more it is discussed the better.

Believe me | My dear Sir | Yours faithfully | Ch. Darwin

P.S. I have been compelled to write this note in haste—

1
See letter from T. M. Reade, 7 December 1880 and n. 1; Reade had sent a copy of the Geological Magazine by the same post as his letter. The Darwins were in London from 7 to 11 December 1880; from 11 to 15 December, they stayed at Leith Hill Place, Surrey, the home of CD’s sister Caroline Sarah Wedgwood (CD’s ‘Journal’ (Appendix II)).
2
Alfred Russel Wallace’s book Island life (Wallace 1880a) included a section on geological age and climate (ibid., pp. 203–29), and a discussion of the permanence of continents and oceans (ibid., pp. 81–102; see p. 82 for Wallace’s critique of Reade on the question of whether oceans had once been dry land). CD discussed Wallace 1880a with Joseph Dalton Hooker (letter to J. D. Hooker, 23 November 1880).
3
CD had discussed the volcanic origin of oceanic islands in Volcanic islands, pp. 124–9. CD concluded that St Paul’s Rocks (Saint Peter and Saint Paul Archipelago) were the top of a submarine mountain (see ‘Beagle’ diary, p. 36). On the extent of shore deposits as surveyed by HMS Challenger, see Murray 1876, p. 519. Wallace cited John Murray (1841–1914) on this point in Wallace 1880a, pp. 83–4.
4
See Wallace 1880a, pp. 87–9.
5
See Origin 6th ed., pp. 288–9.

Manuscript Alterations and Comments

0.1 London] above del ‘Down, | Beckenham, Kent. | (Railway Station | Orpington. S.E.R.’
1.2 forwarded] after del ‘se’
1.3 Nor … Post. 1.4] added
1.5 seems to me] interl above del ‘is’

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-12901,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-12901