Memoir of Edward Forbes, F.R.S., late Regius Professor of Natural History in the University of Edinburgh / by George Wilson and Archibald Geikie.

Date:
1861
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Memoir of Edward Forbes, F.R.S., late Regius Professor of Natural History in the University of Edinburgh / by George Wilson and Archibald Geikie. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    I wish to be settled in London before my lectures begin on the 8th of February. I want Gibbs to work for ten days at the other side of the island, on a very important job, which he alone can be trusted to do. “ I shall leave wife and babbies here when in Ireland, and fetch them after they have all fattened considerably. I must look out for a house as I go through town.” He thus sums up the results of those busy weeks :— “ Samdown, 12tli January 1853. “ Dear Ramsay,—I arrived here last night after being with Gibbs for a week, finishing up the other end of the island. The results are most satisfactory. “ At length I have succeeded in examining bed after bed, the whole series of fluvio-marines; I might almost say without the break of an inch. “ There are minute points, it is true,—all, however, purely palaeontological, that would require a long spell of dry weather before they could be got at. But the geological and zoo-geological evidence is perfect; the order of superposition and perfect conformity of every bed are now made out without possibility of question. There will be more light thrown upon the Upper Eocenes (or Lower Miocenes, as the French will call them) by these sections than by any in Europe, and they will form a scale and test for the continental ones. They will also, if I do not greatly mistake, settle the question about their nomenclature, and definitely ]fiace the upper fluvio- marines, and the corresponding strata of France and Belg ium, in the Eocene series. Gibbs has worked like a brick, and he can tell you that our work has been no joke, with such weather as it has been done in.
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