WCP6891

[1]

Parkstone, Dorset.

Oct^r 3rd 1899

Rev. O. Fisher

My dear Sir

Have you seen the remarkable paper by T.C. Chamberlin in Science of June 30th and July 7 1899, of which he has sent me separate copy, giving an entirely new view of the condition of the interior of the earth based upon the meteoritic theory [?] He shows that Lord Kelvin's calculations of the age of the earth are on this theory quite worthless, while the same theory renders more intelligible the existence of oceanic basins which it is so difficult to account for on the theory of the liquid globe slowly [2] cooling.

If you have read this paper I should like to know whether the various classes of observed facts dealt with by you in your Physics of the Earth's Crust can be harmonised with it. The meteoritic hypothesis seems to me so much more probable than the old nebular hypothesis of a gaseous universe from which the sun and earth were formed by cooling, & which seems to me an impossible conception that Chamberlin's view of the slow formation of the earth by [3] meteorite accretion <seems> worthy of careful consideration. If you have not got the paper I shall be glad to lend you copy.

Thanks for your paper on underground temperaturem but the mathematics are too terrible for me!

Yours very truly | Alfred R. Wallace [signature]