WCP2180

[1]

Bombay

March 2nd 1883

A. R. Wallace Esq

Dear Sir,

I am reading with great pleasure your 'Island Life'¹ 1880, and I should like to write to you on the subject of the change of sea level in relation to the land, or the change of land level in relation to the sea.

I shall also be glad to send you a small book on 'Cyclical Deluges'² published in 1870 now I believe out of print, which goes into detail on this subject, but arrives at very different conclusions from those arrived at by you in your 6th 7th & 8th chapters.

You entirely ignore (the so far as I have read your book) the influence [2] of the great attraction of the mass of ice at ⁱⁿ the south antarctic circle in drawing the mass of waters from the north pole to the South. This heaping up of the water at the south pole in the Southern hemisphere has swamped the ancient continents, the peaks of whose mountains ra only are visible in the south sea Islands & Polynesia, and has laid bare the European & asiatic continents of the northern hemisphere. The reverse operation is now proceeding. The waters in with southern hemisphere are t in the process of lowering, while these in the northern are rising. You are doubtless acquainted with the proceedings of the British associations with reference to continuous automatic tidal observations in process at various points all over the world, for the purpose of determining the mean are level for each year at such station. We have these [3] (3) observations now going on in dozen places in India, Aden, Burma & the Straits Settlements. In Bombay observations have been taken for the past 5 years. These show that the ^mean sea level is steadily rising in Bombay at the rate of about 1/2 inch per annum. This is in sympathy with the increasing yearly heat at the south pole, the breaking up of the ice there which in itself adds to the ^total supply of water in the globe, part of this increase being taken up by the increasing ice barrier at the north pole and the increasing body of water which is thus by this mass ice being drawn ^towards to the arctic circle.

I have read a good deal of the proceedings of scientific men in the United States about the geodetic measurements and tidal observations now being taken there in [illeg.] of what they call the alternation of [4] the true curve of the south.

Your chapter on the precession of the equinoxes and the consequent accumulation of ice in the north is most interesting. It exhibits the astronomical features of the subject more clearly than in any other book I have been able to read.

I send this letter through Macmillan in the hope that it may reach you.

Yours truly | D Gostling³ [signature]

Architect

PS. In England I was an ardent geologist, spending all my holidays in long walks with hammer & knapsack, & well posted up in the standard geological literature. It is only for the past 3 years since I commenced to read the American Scientific magazines, that I wished to study the precession of the equinoxes & its influence.