cit., page xlvi).) I shall next February be much interested by seeing your hour-hand of the organic world going. Many thanks for your kindness in taking the trouble to tell me of the anniversary dinner. What a compliment that was which Lord Mahon paid me! I never had so great a one. He must be as charming a man as his wife is a woman, though I was formerly blind to his merit. Bunsen's speech must have been very interesting and very useful, if any orthodox clergyman were present. Your metaphor of the pebbles of pre-existing languages reminds me that I heard Sir J. Herschel at the Cape say how he wished some one would treat language as you had Geology, and study the existing causes of change, and apply the deduction to old languages. We are all pretty flourishing here, though I have been retrograding a little, and I think I stand excitement and fatigue hardly better than in old days, and this keeps me from coming to London. My cirripedial task is an eternal one; I make no perceptible progress. I am sure that they belong to the hour-hand, and I groan under my task. LETTER 563. C. LYELL TO CHARLES DARWIN. April 23rd, 1855. I have seen a good deal of French geologists and palaeontologists lately, and there are many whom I should like to put on the R.S. Foreign List, such as D'Archiac, Prevost, and others. But the man who has made the greatest sacrifices and produced the greatest results, who has, in fact, added a new period to the calendar, is Barrande. The importance of his discoveries as they stand before the public fully justify your choice of him; but what is unpublished, and which I have seen, is, if possible, still more surprising. Thirty genera of gasteropods (150 species) and 150 species of lamellibranchiate bivalves in the Silurian! All obtained by quarries opened solely by him for fossils. A man of very moderate fortune spending nearly all his capital on geology, and with success. E. Forbes' polarity doctrines are nearly overturned by the unpublished discoveries of Barrande. (563/1. See note, Letter 41, Volume I.) I have called Barrande's new period Cambrian (see "Manual," 5th edition), and you will see why. I could not name it Protozoic, but had Barrande called it Bohemian, I must have adopted that name. All the French will rejoice if you confer an honour on Barrande. Dana is well worthy of being a foreign member. Should you succeed in making Barrande F.R.S., send me word. LETTER 564. TO J.D. HOOKER. June 5th [1857]. (564/1. The following, which bears on the subject of medals, forms part of the long letter printed in the "Life and Letters," II., page 100.)