Ɛpsilon

From Edward Forbes   [9 May 1845]1

Friday.

Dear Darwin

I have been too busy to look over your list with requisite consideration until yesterday.

I have marked on the lists their probable depths judging from the associations of the genera.2 My marks are within wide ranges.

I could come however to more likely conclusions were two points noted

1st—the average size of the specimens & species found in each locality.

2d The comparative abundance of specimens of each species, & their state, as indicating life & death &c

Thus the Huafo list might indicate twice the depth if the species are all very small & the specimens of Turritella few.

All such calculations, at any rate, must be only provisional, until we know the range in Depth of mollusca in the neighbouring seas.

1
Dated from CD’s reply, 13 May [1845].
2
The lists of shells from different localities are in DAR 43.1: 51–2. The localities are Port Saint Julian, Santa Cruz, Huafo Island, Navidad, Copiapó, and the Cordillera of central Chile. Fuller identifications of the shells are given in lists throughout South America. CD used Forbes’s estimates of the depths at which these species lived to demonstrate the amount of sea-bed subsidence that must have occurred at Copiapó and the Cordillera of central Chile (South America, pp. 193, 196).

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-866,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-866