Ɛpsilon

To Charles Lyell   [3 November 1869]1

6 Queen Anne St

My dear Lyell

Very many thanks for your long & interesting letter,—the latter part of which perplexed me not a little till I received the missing sheet.—2 You give me some consolation, but I take the Sun much to heart. I have comforted myself partly in the way which you suggest by our ignorance of the Universe, & by reflecting how little we know of the cause of the incandescent masses of vapour forming comets,—by the sudden blazing up of variable stars—extra planetary meteors &c.—3

With respect to long endurance of our existing continents, I formed my opinion chiefly from facts of geographical distribution, to which I allude in Origin—& partly from views given under Coral Reefs.—4 I quite subscribe to what you say about denudation & from something I somewhere read or heard (perhaps from you) had come to conclusion that there was much grinding up of matter brought down to lower level; but this wd not much affect, I suppose, some of the Scotch streams, the carrying work of which I think has been measured.5

I am tired with my morning’s work in Brit. Museum—so no more.—6

Ever yours | C. Darwin

1
The date is established by the relationship between this letter and the letter from Charles Lyell, 2 November 1869, and by the date of CD’s visit to the British Museum (see n. 6, below).
2
The missing sheet of the letter from Charles Lyell, 2 November 1869, has not been found.
4
For CD’s allusion to the endurance of continents in Origin, see the letter from Charles Lyell, 2 November 1869 and n. 8. In Coral reefs, CD argued that reefs formed as the immense area (or continent) on which they were built subsided over a long period of time; see Coral reefs, pp. 142–4, and Herbert 2005, pp. 242–3.
5
Lyell may have discussed subaerial denudation in Scotland in the missing portion of his letter of 2 November 1869.
6
CD visited the British Museum on 3 November 1869; there is a dated note made on his visit in DAR 85: A71.

Manuscript Alterations and Comments

2.1 long endurance] above del ‘permanence’
2.2 Origin—] ‘O’ over ‘o’
2.7 carrying] above del ‘denuding’

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-5974,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-5974