nto the Natural History and Geology of the Countries
visited during the Voyage of H.M.S. 'Beagle' round the World." London,
1870, page 351.) On the hypothesis of the crust of the earth resting on
fluid matter, would the influence of the moon (as indexed by the tides)
affect the periods of the shocks, when the force which causes them is
just balanced by the resistance of the solid crust? The fact you mention
of the coincidence between the earthquakes of Calabria and Scotland
appears most curious. Your paper will possess a high degree of interest
to all geologists. I fancied that such uniformity of action, as seems
here indicated, was probably confined to large continents, such as the
Americas. How interesting a record of volcanic phenomena in Iceland
would be, now that you are collecting accounts of every slight trembling
in Scotland. I am astonished at their frequency in that quiet country,
as any one would have called it. I wish it had been in my power to
have contributed in any way to your researches on this most interesting
subject.

LETTER 480. TO L. HORNER. Down, August 29th [1844].

I am greatly obliged for your kind note, and much pleased with its
contents. If one-third of what you say be really true, and not the
verdict of a partial judge (as from pleasant experience I much suspect),
then should I be thoroughly well contented with my small volume which,
small as it is, cost me much time. (480/1. "Geological Observations
on the Volcanic Islands visited during the Voyage of H.M.S. 'Beagle'":
London, 1844. A French translation has been made by Professor Renard
of Ghent, and published by Reinwald of Paris in 1902.) The pleasure
of observation amply repays itself: not so that of composition; and it
requires the hope of some small degree of utility in the end to make up
for the drudgery of altering bad English into sometimes a little better
and sometimes worse. With respect to craters of elevation (480/2.
"Geological Observations," pages 93-6.), I had no sooner printed off
the few pages on that subject than I wished the whole erased. I utterly
disbelieve in Von Buch and de Beaumont's views; but on the other
hand, in the case of the Mauritius and St. Jago, I cannot, perhaps
unphilosophically, persuade myself that they are merely the basal
fragments of ordinary volcanoes; and therefore I thought I would suggest
the notion of a slow circumferential elevation, the central part
being left unelevated, owing to the force