Letter from John Ruskin, Coniston, to Harry Govier Seeley, 1885 February 26 : autograph manuscript signed.

Ruskin warns Seeley that he is going to publish a harsh critique of his Manual of Geology. He is obliged by Seeley's courteous reply, but would strongly recommend that in future editions the word "foliated" be quoted by Johnson [Samuel Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language] from Newton [Isaac Newton's Opticks], of beaten gold, (foliated, i.e. by pressure), and foliaceous from Woodward on fossils [John Woodward's An Attempt towards a Natural History of the Fossils of England], of the fracture of talc--that it was in familiar use by Jameson in his mineralogy [Robert Jameson's Manual of Mineralogy], published in 1820, (which Ruskin learned it from and invented a symbol for it in describing minerals when he was twelve years old), and that, in the exact sense in which Mr. Darwin applied it [in Charles Darwin's Geological Observations on South America], it was only the translation of the classical French word "feuillete," always used by [Horace Benedict de] Saussure, who described everything in these rocks except these microscopic structures. Who first used words, or who first discovered facts, is of no importance whatever to the beginner, but it is of importance that the facts should be rightly represented, and above all to scale. Ruskin recommends also in the same page of the manual to give the scale of the drawing of contorted schist, and to reconsider the statement that "the schistic rocks are always crumpled and contorted." He is about to speak in strong letters of such careless work (and in such large volumes, written for the regeneration of former authors in the New Jerusalem of Science). [Added in margin: from what penny handbook was the cut at p. 136, a worthy illustration of Professor Ramsay's theories?] In particular, the Mont Blanc chapter on the study of crystalline rocks. Ruskin has written very cautiously from independent observation, though always under the impulse and eaching given him by [William] Buckland and [Edward] Forbes in 1856. He does not think it debatable, and so does not ask permission to publish Seeley's letter in defence of this statement, but of course will do so verbatim if he wishes it. (Ruskin knew the Beagle voyage observations [Geological Observations on the Volcanic Islands, visited during the Voyage of H.M.S. Beagle] but did not know that they were published so early [1844] before the second edition of 1876.