he glaciers in Switzerland.

Yours is a grand book, and I thank you heartily for the instruction and
pleasure which it has given me.

For heaven's sake forgive the untidiness of this whole note.

LETTER 515. TO JOHN LUBBOCK [Lord Avebury]. Down, November 6th, 1881.

If I had written your Address (515/1. Address delivered by Lord Avebury
as President of the British Association at York in 1881. Dr. Hicks
is mentioned as having classed the pre-Cambrian strata in "four great
groups of immense thickness and implying a great lapse of time" and
giving no evidence of life. Hicks' third formation was named by him the
Arvonian ("Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc." Volume XXXVII., 1881, Proc., page
55.) (but this requires a fearful stretch of imagination on my part) I
should not alter what I had said about Hicks. You have the support of
the President [of the] Geological Society (515/2. Robert Etheridge.),
and I think that Hicks is more likely to be right than X. The latter
seems to me to belong to the class of objectors general. If Hicks should
be hereafter proved to be wrong about this third formation, it would
signify very little to you.

I forget whether you go as far as to support Ramsay about lakes as large
as the Italian ones: if so, I would myself modify the passage a little,
for these great lakes have always made me tremble for Ramsay, yet
some of the American geologists support him about the still larger N.
American lakes. I have always believed in the main in Ramsay's views
from the date of publication, and argued the point with Lyell, and am
convinced that it is a very interesting step in Geology, and that you
were quite right to allude to it. (515/3. "Glacial Origin of Lakes in
Switzerland, Black Forest, etc." ("Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc." Volume
XVIII., pages 185-204, 1862). Sir John Lubbock (Lord Avebury) gives
a brief statement of Ramsay's views concerning the origin of lakes
(Presidential Address, Brit. Assoc. 1881, page 22): "Prof. Ramsay
divides lakes into three classes: (1) Those which are due to irregular
accumulations of drift, and which are generally quite shallow; (2) those
which are formed by moraines; and (3) those which occupy true basins
scooped by glaciers out of the solid rocks. To the latter class belong,
in his opinion, most of the great Swiss and Italian lakes...Professor
Ramsay's theory seems, therefore, to account for a large number of
interesting facts." Sir Archibald Geikie has given a good summary of