the parallel
roads.) I carefully examined that spot, owing to the sheep tracks
[being] nearly but not quite parallel to the terrace. So much, again,
for difference of observation. I do not pretend to say who is right.

LETTER 501. TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, October 12th, 1849.

I was heartily glad to get your last letter; but on my life your thanks
for my very few and very dull letters quite scalded me. I have been very
indolent and selfish in not having oftener written to you and kept
my ears open for news which would have interested you; but I have not
forgotten you. Two days after receiving your letter, there was a short
leading notice about you in the "Gardeners' Chronicle" (501/1. The
"Gardeners' Chronicle," 1849, page 628.); in which it is said you
have discovered a noble crimson rose and thirty rhododendrons. I must
heartily congratulate you on these discoveries, which will interest
the public; and I have no doubt that you will have made plenty of most
interesting botanical observations. This last letter shall be put with
all your others, which are now safe together. I am very glad that
you have got minute details about the terraces in the valleys: your
description sounds curiously like the terraces in the Cordillera of
Chili; these latter, however, are single in each valley; but you will
hereafter see a description of these terraces in my "Geology of S.
America." (501/2. "Geological Observations," pages 10 et passim.) At the
end of your letter you speak about giving up Geology, but you must not
think of it; I am sure your observations will be very interesting. Your
account of the great dam in the Yangma valley is most curious, and quite
full; I find that I did not at all understand its wonderful structure in
your former letter. Your notion of glaciers pushing detritus into
deep fiords (and ice floating fragments on their channels), is in many
respects new to me; but I cannot help believing your dam is a lateral
moraine: I can hardly persuade myself that the remains of floating ice
action, at a period so immensely remote as when the Himalaya stood at
a low level in the sea, would now be distinguishable. (501/3. Hooker's
"Himalayan Journals," Volume II., page 121, 1854. In describing certain
deposits in the Lachoong valley, Hooker writes: "Glaciers might have
forced immense beds of gravel into positions that would dam up lakes
between the ice and the flanks of the valley" (page 121). In a footnote
he adds: "We are