334 Reply to Art. L No, XVIIL 



they allowed their secretary to offer, m his individual capacity,- 

 whatever information their museum could afford to Mr. Swain- 

 son. An intimation to that effect accordingly accompanied 

 the official letter that conveyed the refusal on their own part. 

 The same assistance towards the prosecution of his work 

 was of course offered to Dr. Richardson, the employer of 

 Mr. Swainson, and was freely accepted and frankly * acknow- 

 ledged by him. If Mr. Swainson did not make use of the 

 liberal assistance thus placed within his reach, if he considered 

 himself compelled to seek in a foreign country that aid in 

 science which was freely open to him in his own, the fault 

 rests with himself. What, Sir, I will ask, in conclusion, will 

 your readers now think of the conduct of an individual, who, 

 having placed himself in circumstances under which any man 

 of common delicacy of feeling would have shrunk from observ-* 

 ation, nevertheless obtrudes himself unblushingly into notice 

 as an accuser, where, by right, he should stand as the accused, 

 and the calumniator of an honourable institution, that had 

 treated him with unprecedented generosity and forbearance? 

 It is not the least of the evils that attend such controversiesf 

 as the present, into which an individual is dragged contrary 

 to all his feelings and principles, that he is forced to make 

 himself the subject of discussion, and even, at times, to speak 

 of himself in language that must apparently bear the character 

 of commendation. One of the insinuations advanced by this 

 writer, in his inconsistent and ill digested attack, is, that the 

 illiberality, of which he accuses the Zoological Society, — 

 with what justice we have already ascertained, — may be 

 attributed to the secretary of that body, whom he honours 

 with the distinction of being " its chief adviser." Your 

 readers. Sir, will scarcely imagine that the individual thus 

 accused of illiberality, in using his influence to debar men of 

 science from the use of the Society's museum, had it in his 

 power, if such had been the bent of his disposition, to mono- 



* I should refer on this occasion to Dr. Richardson's published acknow- 

 ledgments of the assistance he received from our Society, in the Fauna 

 Boredli-Americdna for instance, were it not likely to be said that such 

 acknowledgments are but matters of course and form, and, as such, of little 

 weight. I shall therefore transcribe the following letter of his, written 

 expressly in answer to an appeal of mine on this subject : — 



" My dear Sir, — In answer to your question as to whether I have or 

 have not received from you every facility in consulting the collection of 

 the Zoological Society, 1 have no hesitation in saying that you afforded me 

 every facility that I could desire, and showed the greatest anxiety to aid me 

 in my researches. 



" I am, my dear Sir, very truly yours, 

 ** London, June 14. 18^1. ' John Richardson." 



