WCP2219

[1]

73 Harley St

March 13. 1869

Dear Wallace

I enclose a copy of a letter¹ which I am sending today to M^r Croll.² I wish you had happened to be at the R. S. on Thursday last. My conversation with M^r Scott³ and Cap^tn Inglefield⁴ has inclined me to believe that much drift-wood from southern regions is now becoming fossil — trunks without leaves & branches, but as to upright modern trees of lost glacial age I have heard of no proofs [2] to lend them until he had got an India Museum built.

I saw M^r Foster⁵ for a moment. It is evident that the ministers are as yet too unsettled in their new places to have leisure seriously to attend to museums or any educational establishments, and Parliament is too much occupied with other momentous questions.

I am reading your new book,⁶ of which you kindly sent me a copy, with very great pleasure. Nothing equal to it has come out since Darwin’s "Voyage of the Beagle".⁷ I have sent [3] 2 several copies as presents and recommended friends to get it. I hope you have only sold one edition. You should get out a cheaper copy. It is very handsomely turned out, but would sell much more if it cost less, even if the style of printing was inferior. The illustrations are beautifully executed and well chosen. It would be very useful to give a small portion of the trunk of a tree with two or three bamboo steps as pegs, and the connecting ladder which would add to the interest. The history of the Mias is very well done. [4] They must, if there th be such fossils, have been imbedded in a matrix afterwards washed away from them, unless you suppose snow & ice to have buried them by the sudden coming on of an icy period. I suspect the evidence is so loose that you might not to commit yourself to it without much inquiry.

I have had an interview with Lord de Grey⁸ and recommended him to get your book, which he has ordered: I told him about your being kept in suspense: he has pro= [5] missed to do what he can, which, in the present unsettled state of the whole affair, is not much. I am sure he has no one else in view, and he has read the memorial in your favour. He has talked with the Duke of Argyll,⁹who seems more inclined to have a museum of India revived & improved than to lend their packed up & hidden treasures to East London: but Lord de Grey agreed with me that it would be well to try and persuade the Duke[.]

[6]

I am not yet through the first volume, but my wife¹⁰ is deep in the second, and much taken with it. It is so rare to be able to depend on the scientific knowledge and accuracy of those who have so much of the wonderful to relate.

Please do return me the copy of my letter to Croll; I hope to get M^r Scott to go into the evidence. He seems to have collected when he was at Dublin all that was known about erect trees from the polar regions[.]

believe me | [7] ever most truly yours | Cha Lyell¹¹ [signature]