WCP2760

[1]

30 Pulteney St

Bath

Feb 11. 1897

My dear Doctor Wallace

I was extremely glad to recognize your handwriting this morning but am sorry to have been subject to annoyance through the incivility of Lord Eldon’s¹ Gamekeeper ^and who rules the estate like a despot. It is sad to think that those who possess power do not exercise it or [2 words illeg.] distribute the greatest happiness. There is no use in writing to Lord Eldon. I shall shortly be in London when I will bring the subject before him. He is a [illeg.] letter man & will no doubt do as you wish — Mr [2] Barker² is the one of all others whose chief delight seems to be to [illeg.] his [illeg.] which are many & great Stand off. I regret we don’t often meet. In fact I am become so infirm I am unable to get about as of old. However I shall endeavour to look you up this summer after a months [illeg.] in this most depressing place.

Erica ciliaris seems to be [illeg.] itself far & wide. Its first jump as far as we know was to the Piddle Valley at Sanford. The [2 words illeg.] it further north & now you have found it [3] at Poole. I had a splendid geological time of it last Winter & Spring at Amelie les Bains the Eastern extremity of the Pyrenees where the [2 words illeg.] cut the Mediterranean near the Spanish & French frontier. The most remarkable feature is the grandest expression of granitic gneiss & Cambrian Silurian & other paleozoic rocks along the valley of the [illeg.] surmounted by a [2 words illeg.] which at one time was filled with glaciers whose remains flank the precipitous sides of the valley which [illeg.] on the alluvial plain through a splendid series of Pliocene rocks round fossiliferous. There [4] within a distance of 10 miles there is a grand study of the oldest & the newest of the geological series.

Please give my kind regards to Mrs Wallace.³

& Believe me | Yours very truly | J. C. Mansel-Pleydell⁴ [signature]