From Thomas Belt   3 April 1875

Cornwall House Ealing

April 3 1875

Dear Mr Darwin,

Mr Codrington’s paper is on the “Superficial deposits of the South of Hampshire and the Isle of Wight” and is published in the Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society Vol. XXVI P. 528.1 It is one of the most admirable descriptions of the gravels I have seen—

I visited the cutting on the railway near here this afternoon and found that more than three fourths of the pebbles are broken— Some action, violent I think, has cleared them from off the hills above 400 feet above the sea and spread them out in wide sheets below 200 feet—

Mr Farrer has given me some most interesting information respecting the absence of flints over the surface of the greensand in the neighbourhood of Abinger and I am much elated to find it fits in beautifully with my glacial theory—2

Yours very truly | Thomas Belt

Charles Darwin Esqre | 6 Queen Anne Street | Cavendish Square | London

CD annotations

Top of letter: ‘Reference to’ pencil
1
No letter has been found in which CD asked Belt about Thomas Codrington’s paper (Codrington 1870), but the two probably discussed it in person; see the letter to Thomas Belt, 31 March [1875], in which CD proposes a meeting.
2
Thomas Henry Farrer lived at Abinger Hall, Reigate, Surrey. Belt’s glacial theory was presented in Belt 1874b; see also letter from Oswald Heer, 23 March 1875 and n. 7. On Belt’s visit to Abinger, see the letter from T. H. Farrer, 3 April 1875.

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-9912,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-9912