Your letter of the 14th February was a great surprise to me. I blamed myself for not writing you sooner than I did on the event which I had long been anxious to see realized; but I took it for granted that you had long before received the official announcement from the foreign secretary that you were, at the last anniversary of the Royal Society, the recipient of the highest honor which our body can bestow, whether on a foreigner or a native. . .On going to the Royal Society to-day I found that the President and Secretaries were much surprised that you had never answered the official letter sent to you on the 1st or 2nd December by the Foreign Secretary, Professor Muller, of Cambridge. He wrote to announce the award, and told you the Copley Medal was in his safe keeping till you wrote to say what you wished to have done with it. I have now recommended him to transmit it officially to you through the United States Minister, Mr. Adams. In these times of irritation, everything which soothes and calms down angry feelings ought to be resorted to; and I hope it may be publicly known that when our newspapers were reciprocating all sorts of rudenesses, the men of science of England thought of nothing but honoring a beloved and eminent savant of America. I thank you for your clear and manly view of the North and South, which I shall show to all our mutual friends. Egerton, who is now here, was delighted to hear of you, as well as Huxley, Lyell, and many others. . . In a paper just read to the Geological Society Professor Ramsay has made a stronger demand on the powers of ice than you ever did. He imagines that every Swiss lake north and south (Geneva, Neuchatel, Como, etc.) has been scooped out, and the depressions excavated by the abrading action of the glaciers. FROM SIR PHILIP DE GREY EGERTON. ALBEMARLE ST., LONDON, March 11, 1862. MON CHER AGASS,