With respect to the continental and oceanic periods common to the whole northern hemisphere, to which you refer, I have sometimes speculated that the present distribution of the land and sea over the world may have formerly been very different to what it now is; and that new genera and families may have been developed on the shores of isolated tracts in the south, and afterwards spread to the north.
LETTER 286. TO J.W. JUDD. Down, June 27th, 1878.
I am heartily glad to hear of your intended marriage. A good wife is the supreme blessing in this life, and I hope and believe from what you say that you will be as happy as I have been in this respect. May your future geological work be as valuable as that which you have already done; and more than this need not be wished for any man. The practical teaching of Geology seems an excellent idea.
Many thanks for Neumayr, (286/1. Probably a paper on "Die Congerien und Paludinenschichten Slavoniens und deren Fauna. Ein Beitrag zur Descendenz- Theorie," "Wien. Geol. Abhandl." VII. (Heft 3), 1874-82.), but I have already received and read a copy of the same, or at least of a very similar essay, and admirably good it seemed to me.
This essay, and one by Mojsisovics (286/2. See note to Letter 285.), which I have lately read, show what Palaeontology in the future will do for the classification and sequence of formations. It delighted me to see so inverted an order of proceeding--viz., the assuming the descent of species as certain, and then taking the changes of closely allied forms as the standard of geological time. My health is better than it was a few years ago, but I never pass a day without much discomfort and the sense of extreme fatigue.
(286/3. We owe to Professor Judd the following interesting recollections of Mr. Darwin, written about 1883:--
"On this last occasion, when I congratulated him on his seeming better condition of health, he told me of the cause for anxiety which he had in the state of his heart. Indeed, I cannot help feeling that he had a kind of presentiment that his end was approaching. When I left him, he insisted on conducting me to the door, and there was that in his tone and manner which seemed to convey to me the sad intelligence that it was not merely a temporary farewell, though he himself was perfectly cheerful and happy.
"It is impossible for me adequately to express the impression made upon my mind by my various conversations with Mr. Darwin. His extreme modesty led him to form the lowest estimate of his own labours, and a correspondingly extravagant idea of the value of the work done by others. His deference to the arguments and suggestions of men greatly his juniors, and his unaffected sympathy in their pursuits, was most marked and characteristic; indeed, he, the great master of science, used to speak, and I am sure felt, as though he were appealing to superior authority for information in all his conversations. It was only when a question was fully discussed with him that one became conscious of the fund of information he could bring to its elucidation, and the breadth of thought with which he had grasped it. Of his gentle, loving nature, of which I had so many proofs, I need not write; no one could be with him, even for a few minutes, without being deeply impressed by his grateful kindliness and goodness.")
LETTER 287. TO COUNT SAPORTA. Down, August 15th, 1878.
I thank you very sincerely for your kind and interesting letter. It would be false in me to pretend that I care very much about my election to the Institute, but the sympathy of some few of my friends has gratified me deeply.
I am extremely glad to hear that you are going to publish a work on the more ancient fossil plants; and I thank you beforehand for the volume which you kindly say that you will send me. I earnestly hope that you will give, at least incidentally, the results at which you have arrived with respect to the more recent Tertiary plants; for the close gradation of such forms seems to me a fact of paramount importance for the principle of evolution. Your cases are like those on the gradation in the genus Equus, recently discovered by Marsh in North America.