ch can be seen and heard, whereas the
fluctuations of the living creation are nearly invisible, and resemble
the motion of the hour-hand of a timepiece" (loc. cit., page xlvi).) I
shall next February be much interested by seeing your hour-hand of the
organic world going.

Many thanks for your kindness in taking the trouble to tell me of the
anniversary dinner. What a compliment that was which Lord Mahon paid me!
I never had so great a one. He must be as charming a man as his wife is
a woman, though I was formerly blind to his merit. Bunsen's speech must
have been very interesting and very useful, if any orthodox clergyman
were present. Your metaphor of the pebbles of pre-existing languages
reminds me that I heard Sir J. Herschel at the Cape say how he wished
some one would treat language as you had Geology, and study the existing
causes of change, and apply the deduction to old languages.

We are all pretty flourishing here, though I have been retrograding a
little, and I think I stand excitement and fatigue hardly better than in
old days, and this keeps me from coming to London. My cirripedial task
is an eternal one; I make no perceptible progress. I am sure that they
belong to the hour-hand, and I groan under my task.

LETTER 563. C. LYELL TO CHARLES DARWIN. April 23rd, 1855.

I have seen a good deal of French geologists and palaeontologists
lately, and there are many whom I should like to put on the R.S. Foreign
List, such as D'Archiac, Prevost, and others. But the man who has made
the greatest sacrifices and produced the greatest results, who has, in
fact, added a new period to the calendar, is Barrande.

The importance of his discoveries as they stand before the public fully
justify your choice of him; but what is unpublished, and which I
have seen, is, if possible, still more surprising. Thirty genera of
gasteropods (150 species) and 150 species of lamellibranchiate bivalves
in the Silurian! All obtained by quarries opened solely by him for
fossils. A man of very moderate fortune spending nearly all his capital
on geology, and with success.

E. Forbes' polarity doctrines are nearly overturned by the unpublished
discoveries of Barrande. (563/1. See note, Letter 41, Volume I.)

I have called Barrande's new period Cambrian (see "Manual," 5th
edition), and you will see why. I could not name it Protozoic, but had
Barrande called it Bohemian, I must have adopted that name. All the
French will rejoice if you con