With respect to the terraces at lower levels coincident in height all round Scotland and England, I am inclined to believe he shows some little probability of there being some leading ones coincident, but much more exact evidence is required. Would you believe it credible? he advances as a probable solution to account for the rise of Great Britain that in some great ocean one-twentieth of the bottom of the whole aqueous surface of the globe has sunk in (he does not say where he puts it) for a thickness of half a mile, and this he has calculated would make an apparent rise of 130 feet."
CHARLES DARWIN TO C. LYELL. Down [June, 1848].
My dear Lyell,
Out of justice to Chambers I must trouble you with one line to say, as far as I am personally concerned in Glen Roy, he has made the amende honorable, and pleads guilty through inadvertency of taking my two lines of arguments and facts without acknowledgment. He concluded by saying he "came to the same point by an independent course of inquiry, which in a small degree excuses this inadvertency." His letter altogether shows a very good disposition, and says he is "much gratified with the MEASURED approbation which you bestow, etc." I am heartily glad I was able to say in truth that I thought he had done good service in calling more attention to the subject of the terraces. He protests it is unfair to call the sinking of the sea his theory, for that he with care always speaks of mere change of level, and this is quite true; but the one section in which he shows how he conceives the sea might sink is so astonishing, that I believe it will with others, as with me, more than counterbalance his previous caution. I hope that you may think better of the book than I do.
Yours most truly, C. DARWIN.
CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. October 6th, 1848.
...I have lately been trying to get up an agitation (but I shall not succeed, and indeed doubt whether I have time and strength to go on with it), against the practice of Naturalists appending for perpetuity the name of the FIRST describer to species. I look at this as a direct premium to hasty work, to NAMING instead of DESCRIBING. A species ought to have a name so well known that the addition of the author's name would be superfluous, and a [piece] of empty vanity. (His contempt for the self- regarding spirit in a naturalist is illustrated by an anecdote, for which I am indebted to Rev. L. Blomefield. After speaking of my father's love of Entomology at Cambridge, Mr. Blomefield continues:--"He occasionally came over from Cambridge to my Vicarage at Swaffham Bulbeck, and we went out together to collect insects in the woods at Bottisham Hall, close at hand, or made longer excursions in the Fens. On one occasion he captured in a large bag net, with which he used vigorously to sweep the weeds and long grass, a rare coleopterous insect, one of the Lepturidae, which I myself had never taken in Cambridgeshire. He was pleased with his capture, and of course carried it home in triumph. Some years afterwards, the voyage of the 'Beagle' having been made in the interim, talking over old times with him, I reverted to this circumstance, and asked if he remembered it. 'Oh, yes,' (he said,) 'I remember it well; and I was selfish enough to keep the specimen, when you were collecting materials for a Fauna of Cambridgeshire, and for a local museum in the Philosophical Society.' He followed this up with some remarks on the pettiness of collectors, who aimed at nothing beyond filling their cabinets with rare things.") At present, it would not do to give mere specific names; but I think Zoologists might open the road to the omission, by referring to good systematic writers instead of to first describers. Botany, I fancy, has not suffered so much as Zoology from mere NAMING; the characters, fortunately, are more obscure. Have you ever thought on this point? Why should Naturalists append their own names to new species, when Mineralogists and Chemists do not do so to new substances? When you write to Falconer pray remember me affectionately to him.