53, Harley Street, London, June 17th, 1856.

I wonder you did not also mention D. Sharpe's paper (47/2. "On the Last
Elevation of the Alps, etc." ("Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc." Volume XII.,
1856, page 102.), just published, by which the Alps were submerged as far
as 9,000 feet of their present elevation above the sea in the Glacial
period and then since uplifted again. Without admitting this, you would
probably convey the alpine boulders to the Jura by marine currents, and if
so, make the Alps and Jura islands in the glacial sea. And would not the
Glacial theory, as now very generally understood, immerse as much of Europe
as I did in my original map of Europe, when I simply expressed all the area
which at some time or other had been under water since the commencement of
the Eocene period? I almost suspect the glacial submergence would exceed
it.

But would not this be a measure of the movement in every other area,
northern (arctic), antarctic, or tropical, during an equal period--oceanic
or continental? For the conversion of sea into land would always equal the
turning of much land into sea.

But all this would be done in a fraction of the Pliocene period; the
Glacial shells are barely 1 per cent. extinct species. Multiply this by
the older Pliocene and Miocene epochs.

You also forget an author who, by means of atolls, contrived to submerge
archipelagoes (or continents?), the mountains of which must originally have
differed from each other in height 8,000 (or 10,000?) feet, so that they
all just rose to the surface at one level, or their sites are marked by
buoys of coral. I could never feel sure whether he meant this tremendous
catastrophe, all brought about by what Sedgwick called "Lyell's niggling