From Adam Sedgwick to William Kemp   13 October 1848

Dear Sir

I found your letter on my return to Cambridge; & I should have thanked you for it without delay had I not found some letters of business which pressed for an immediate answer, & had I not immediately afterwards become entangled in a College Examination which only ended on the 11^th. I was so fatigued by the labour that I become indisposed; & I have come to this place to refit—bringing my unanswered letters along with me. Unless I could see your specimen I can form no judgment on the question of the cause of the peculiar markings you describe so graphically. In natural history verbal description, however good, is a dull thing compared with the evidence of sight. After I left Galashiels I ascended the Tweed to its last ramifications among the turf-bogs. I found fossils such as graptolites; &, (I think) Annellides in considerable abundance—& near Wear, in the well known limestone, I found a few shells. But the stone is not worked now for the kilns and the fragments lying about have been picked over again and again: so that our operations were like those of gleaners rather than of reapers—. On the whole I am satisfied with the fruits of my autumnal work—I return to Cambridge, I hope, about the middle of next week, & should you ever come to the neighbourhood of our University I shall hope to see you & to show you my Museum

Believe me Dear Sir | very truly yours | A Sedgwick

P.S. If your hypothesis is true I think you will stumble on other specimens like that you mention   At all events it will be well to keep a sharp look out—