Ɛpsilon

From Archibald Geikie   14 November 1881

Geological Survey of Scotland | Edinburgh

14th Novr. 1881

My dear Sir

Your letter of 11th. has just reached me and I hasten to thank you for your most generous offer of assistance in the exploration of the Eskdale beds.1

We have opened up the strata and thoroughly ransacked them as far as they can be reached without more extensive quarrying operations. But I propose to apply to the Duke of Buccleugh’s Agent for leave to open up more of the ground as soon as my Collectors are ready to return to the place.2 The work I think is quite within our duties in the Geological Survey and I shall not hesitate to employ my men. But if the operations should eventually seem getting beyond our power I shall very gladly avail myself of your liberality. I daresay the Royal Society would give us a small sum in aid if that were desirable. But I hope no such application will be needed.

I may tell you that though from a wish not to forestall young Peach’s announcement, I did not allude to the discovery of other air breathers   we have found two specimens of amphibians, one of them about 2 inches and the other about 5 or 6 inches long.3 These are remarkably curious forms. They present lines of scutes along the back but none on the ventral surface. They shew interspinous processes like those of a fish. Their vertebrae are provided with a singular arrangement of wedge and slot— They had paddles which strikingly remind one of that of the Ichthyosaurus.4 They have not yet been worked out; so that probably other interesting details remain to be discovered.

Besides the chitinous tests of scorpions there are not improbably remains of insects in the mass of compressed organic matter.5 But we have as yet been unable to recognize them.

Since the perfect specimens of Scorpion were detected we have gone over our older collections and have recognized quite a number of true scorpion fragments among them. Knowing what to look for the collectors have gone to the ground & have obtained abundant scorpion remains from a number of different localities. I propose to institute a special search in some of the more promising lands. I shall let you know if we have any success. Meanwhile again thanking you for your liberal offer and the interest you have shewn in the investigation.

Believe me to remain. Yours very truly | Arch Geikie

Charles Darwin Esq | FRS.

1
See letter to Archibald Geikie, 11 November 1881 and n. 1. Scorpion fossils had been found in shale deposits on the banks of the River Esk in Dumfriesshire, Scotland.
2
The duke of Buccleuch (Buccleugh is an older variant spelling) was Walter Francis Montagu-Douglas-Scott. The excavations had been undertaken by members of the Geological Survey of Scotland, of which Geikie was director.
3
Benjamin Neeve Peach worked on the Geological Survey of Scotland and reported on some of the fossil fish found at Eskdale (see Nature, 3 November 1881, p. 2, and Peach 1881).
4
Scutes are bony external plates or scales, as on the shell of a turtle. Ichthyosaurus is large extinct marine reptile from the early Jurassic period. The publication on the amphibians has not been found.
5
Chitin is the primary structural material of insect and crustacean exoskeletons.

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-13484,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-13484