Do you suppose the fewness of species in proportion to number of large groups in coral islets is owing to the chance of seeds from all orders getting drifted to such new spots, as I have supposed.

Did you collect sea-shells in Kerguelen-land?
I should like to know their character.
Your interesting letters tempt me to be very unreasonable in asking you questions; but you must not give yourself any trouble about them, for I know how fully and worthily you are employed.

(13/2.

The rest of the letter has been previously published in "Life and Letters," II., page 23.) Besides a general interest about the southern lands, I have been now ever since my return engaged in a very presumptuous work, and I know no one individual who would not say a very foolish one.

I was so struck with the distribution of the Galapagos organisms, etc., and with the character of the American fossil mammifers, etc., that I determined to collect blindly every sort of fact which could bear any way on what are species.