WCP2209

Letter (WCP2209.2099)

[1]1

Harlton,

Cambridge

5 May 1894

Dear Dr Wallace

I am pleased to find that we are in accord respecting Lapworth’s2 views which I have seen glorified (I think) by the name of "The New Geology".

I have written the enclosed in response to your challenge. I shall be very glad if you will take the trouble to consider it.

Have you a copy of my paper at Cambridge of 30th May 1892.?3 The first three pages are wrong, because I took a wrong numerical value out of Thomson & Tait4. But the latter part is important as referred to in what I now send.

[2] Jukes-Browne5 who on the whole accepts my views does not agree to chap[ter] XXV of my book6 & thinks it a pity I published it. I do not agree with him.

Pray make the experiment with the tea and egg. Water does not answer so well. I suppose the tannin is required to reduce the egg to the proper consistency.

You will see that I have kept a copy of the M[anu]S[cript].

I have got your Island life7 [sic] out of the Library. I see a note from a letter of mine in Nature8 which I utterly had forgotten all about.

I am pleased that the Geological survey of India9 give their unqualified approval to my theory of mountains as applied to the Himalayas & call my book a "great work". They have [3] just sent me their 2nd Ed[itio]n of the "Geology of India"10.

I once accidentally made an interesting experiment. I wanted a block of lead for a stand. So I took a flower pot and blocked the bottom of it with a piece of wood which I turned out of a damp log with least cracks in it. The hot lead evolved steam from the wood through a crack in it & violent ebullition of the lead went on for a short time. [A diagram of the pot with "lead" and "block of wood" labelled is shown here].

The wavelets of lead were solidified as they were driven away from the upward current and formed wide rings when all at once the ebullition ceased and a comparatively smooth area was formed in the middle. It just put me in mind of the mare’s as I believe they are called in the [1 or 2 words illeg.] [A diagram of concentric rings without labels is shown here].

Believe me | Sincerely yours | Osmond Fisher [signature]

1
Page numbered 336 in pencil in top RH corner
2
Lapworth, Charles (1842-1920). English geologist who pioneered faunal analysis using index fossils and identified the Ordovician period. In 1881 he became the first professor of geology at Mason Science College, later the University of Birmingham, where he taught until his retirement.
3
Fisher, O. (1892) On the hypothesis of a liquid condition of the earth’s interior considered in connexion with Professor Darwin’s theory of the genesis of the Moon Proceedings of the Cambridge Philosophical Society Vol. VII pp. 335-347.
4
Thomson, W. & Tait, P. G. (1867) Treatise on Natural Philosophy Oxford University Press.
5
Jukes-Browne, Alfred John (1851-1914). British invertebrate palaeontologist and stratigrapher. He worked on the British Geological Survey 1883-1902.
6
Fisher, O. (1881) The Physics of the Earth’s Crust London, Macmillan & Co. (2nd Edn. published 1889).
7
Wallace, A. R. (1880) Island Life: Or, The Phenomena and Causes of Insular Faunas and Floras, Including a Revision and Attempted Solution of the Problem of Geological Climates. London, Macmillan & Co.
8
Fisher, O. (1873) Elevation of Mountains and Volcanic Theories Nature Vol. 9, p. 61.
9
Established in 1851, a government organization attached to the Ministry of Mines of Union Government of India for conducting geological surveys and studies.
10
Oldham, R. D. (1893) A Manual of the Geology of India. 2nd Edition. Calcutta, Geological Survey of India.

Editorial information

Status: Draft transcription [Letter (WCP2209.2099)]

For more information about the transcriptions and metadata, see https://wallaceletters.myspecies.info/content/epsilon

Revision history

Transcribed by O'Dell, Sandra [2015-05-21] Transcription checked by Benny, Ruth [2015-05-21] Transcription checked by Sherwood, Danni [2020-08-10]

Please cite as “WCP2209,” in Beccaloni, G. W. (ed.), Ɛpsilon: The Alfred Russel Wallace Collection accessed on 28 April 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/wallace/letters/WCP2209