To Adolf von Morlot   9 August [1844]

Dear Sir

I should have replied to your last obliging letter, had I not lately been much engaged, before this time. I regret exceedingly to say, that I cannot undertake to see your Journal published: my health during the last three years has been exceedingly weak, so that I am able to work only two or three hours in the 24: these are more than fully occupied & I have materials for several years’ work, which is almost more than I dare undertake. Under these circumstances, I hope you will not think me either unkind or unreasonable in declining to add to my employments, & you must be well aware that everything going through the press costs time & trouble. The only channel of publication in England, that I can see, without great expence to yourself, might possibly be the Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal; but I cannot here aid you, as I am not acquainted with the Editor.—¹

We in England are accustomed to believe, that publication is much less expensive with you, than with us: certainly Engraving is. The cheapness of German Books always astonishes me, & I wish scientific authors in England knew, how to follow so good an example. I may just mention to you, that “M. Baillière Bookseller Regent St” is one of the most spirited of scientific publishers, & it might, perhaps, be worth while to send your M.S. to him. Every publisher, however, in England looks at scientific books with a cold eye.— I hope sincerely that you will meet with success in whatever you determine on, though I cannot aid you.

You will think me a great sceptic, when I tell you that your letter has not convinced me. I daresay there may have been Glaciers on the mountains you describe, but my mind will require a long series of proofs to believe that they have come from Scandinavia.— One always puts too much stress on what one self has seen; but I cannot avoid suspecting that N. Wales offers an example of what has happened in many cases; viz, that the Boulders have been transported & rocks scored by floating ice, & that after & during elevation, glaciers have removed all these appearances, except on the outskirts, & have left in place their own marks.—² I do not believe the respective shares of work of these two agencies, will be clear, until the action of floating ice has been fuller studied in the north & some distinctive effect, if any exist, pointed out. The piled boulders, one on another, appears to me likely to be a distinctive character.—

Have you ever examined the bottoms of the pot-holes? I think it w^d be worth doing, for I found the shape of those, formed by eddies during floods in the Welch brooks, curious: they were formed like the bottom of the inside of a green glass bottle—a form evidently due to the centrifugal action of the revolving sand & pebbles.

Are you aware that Hopkins has lately published a paper in Cambridge Phil. Trans.³ in which he disputes Forbe’s semi-fluid theory,⁴ & maintains that the movement cannot be compared with that of a viscid fluid:— he attributes all to gravity, with the aid of the lower surface melting.—

With my best wishes for your success & that your zeal may be rewarded by many discoveries; believe me, Yours sincerely | C. Darwin