eeing you here. We are necessarily dull here, and can offer
no amusements; but the weather is delightful, and if you could see how
brightly the sun now shines you would be tempted to come. Pray remember
me most kindly to all your family, and beg of them to accept our
proposal, and give us the pleasure of seeing them.

LETTER 481. TO C. LYELL. Down, [September, 1844].

I was glad to get your note, and wanted to hear about your work. I
have been looking to see it advertised; it has been a long task. I had,
before your return from Scotland, determined to come up and see you; but
as I had nothing else to do in town, my courage has gradually eased
off, more especially as I have not been very well lately. We get so many
invitations here that we are grown quite dissipated, but my stomach has
stood it so ill that we are going to have a month's holidays, and go
nowhere.

The subject which I was most anxious to talk over with you I have
settled, and having written sixty pages of my "S. American Geology," I
am in pretty good heart, and am determined to have very little theory
and only short descriptions. The two first chapters will, I think, be
pretty good, on the great gravel terraces and plains of Patagonia and
Chili and Peru.

I am astonished and grieved over D'Orbigny's nonsense of sudden
elevations. (481/1. D'Orbigny's views are referred to by Lyell in
chapter vii. of the "Principles," Volume I. page 131. "This mud [i.e.
the Pampean mud] contains in it recent species of shells, some of them
proper to brackish water, and is believed by Mr. Darwin to be an
estuary or delta deposit. M.A. D'Orbigny, however, has advanced an
hypothesis...that the agitation and displacement of the waters of the
ocean, caused by the elevation of the Andes, gave rise to a deluge, of
which this Pampean mud, which reaches sometimes the height of 12,000
feet, is the result and monument.") I must give you one of his cases:
He finds an old beach 600 feet above sea. He finds STILL ATTACHED to the
rocks at 300 feet six species of truly littoral shells. He finds at 20
to 30 feet above sea an immense accumulation of chiefly littoral shells.
He argues the whole 600 feet uplifted at one blow, because the attached
shells at 300 feet have not been displaced. Therefore when the sea
formed a beach at 600 feet the present littoral shells were attached
to rocks at 300 feet depth, and these same shells were accumulating by
thousands at 600 feet.

Hear this, oh