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‘ [446] the line engraving, so well known in the Old World; and I became convinced of what I had already anticipated as the logical sequence of my previous investigations, that here also this great agent had been at work.’ The incident seems a very natural introduction to the following letter, written a few months later:—

To Elie de Beaumont.

Boston, August 31, 1847.
. . .I have waited to write until I should have some facts sufficiently important to claim your attention. In truth, the study of the marine animals, which I am, for the first time, able to observe in their natural conditions of existence, has engrossed me almost exclusively since I came to the United States, and only incidentally, as it were, I have turned my attention to paleontology and geology. I must, however, except the glacial phenomena, a problem, the solution of which always interests me deeply. This great question, far from presenting itself more simply here, is complicated by peculiarities never brought to my notice in Europe. Happily for me, Mr. Desor, who had been in Scandinavia before joining me here, called my attention


Houghton, Mifflin and company, New York, Boston, 1885.

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