WCP2873

[1]

Geological Department

University

Glasgow

26th April 1907

Dear Dr Wallace,

Mr Stanford¹ has send [sic] me your letter to him about the new edition of the geography. Allow me to express my very best thanks for your kind and generous remarks about it. I felt reluctant to undertake the work when Mr Stanford first asked me, but I had been agitating in Australia for two or three years for a great alteration in the mode of looking as ^at the structure of the Australian continent; and this book, provided it were entirely rewritten, gave me the oppurtunity of redescribing the country from a fresh point of view. It is a much more technical book than yours, and I hope it will be used as materials by writers of text-books and others.

Unfortunately as many European geographical terms have been used in Australia in a very different sense from their original meaning, and thus are misleading to European geographers. The conception of the structure of Victoria which I got from the literature, I found, when I got out there, was ludicrously wrong; and I did not see how anybody could have come to different conclusions who had to rely on the literature with misleading terms. I was very glad, though I went out to Australia believing in Flower² and Lydekker's³ view of the Aboriginies, ^that what I was ^{saw & leant} of them there converted me to yours. The view is, I think steadily growing, and will, I have no doubt, prevail. Spencer⁴ objects to it most strenously, but his conclusions are, I think, generally regarded as less reliable than his observations. With renewed thanks,

Yours sincerely, | J. W. Gregory [signature]