196 Prof. Sedgwick's Reply to Prof. Milne-Edwards. 



when it was made, I may surely be excused for a little lack of 

 memory. 



All the statements of my former communication (of April 

 last) stand good and are unshaken. MM. Edwards and Haime 

 visited Cambridge (about the end of the year 1849) and made 

 arrangements with Professor M'Coy for procuring figures of cer- 

 tain Oolitic corals, with a view to their publication in the essay 

 on "British Oolitic Corals,^' which appeared in 1851. These 

 arrangements were given up, without any further communi- 

 cation from them on the subject, either to Professor M'^Coy or 

 myself. Some time afterwards (early in 1850) an application was 

 made by Mr. Bowerbank (in behalf of the Palseontographical 

 Society) for a loan of certain Oolitic corals in the Cambridge 

 Museum, in order that they might be figured at Paris. This 

 request could not be complied with, for reasons given in my 

 " Reply,^^ &c., which was published in the ' Annals ' of April 

 last. I can state most positively that Mr. Bowerbank^s appli- 

 cation (made by letter) did not include so much as one Palaeozoic 

 species : but along with it was a formal list (at this moment pre- 

 served among the papers of the Woodwardian Museum) of the 

 specimens wanted — all of which were Oolitic. 



When, therefore, my friend Mr. Bowerbank laughs at my lack 

 of memoiy while I was in the pains of a parturient speech ; I can, 

 with like good humour, retort upon him with interest, and con- 

 vict him also of an occasional fit of obliviousness. For in a letter 

 I have before me, he asserts that, on behalf of the Palseonto- 

 graphical Society, "he never wrote to me but once, and that 

 once was regarding the Palaeozoic fossils.^' Now, if he ever wrote 

 about the Palaeozoic fossils he must (at the least) have written 

 twice ; for he once assuredly wrote, very specifically and formally, 

 about the Oolitic fossils and about them only. 



In his Reply he gives a list of those to whom he did write on 

 the subject of Palaeozoic fossils, to be published by the Palaeon- 

 tographical Society in 1852. And he appears to have no doubt 

 that he also wrote to me on the same subject. I affirm, on the 

 contrary, that I never received from him any letter on this sub- 

 ject. And (if I mistake not), I can, out of his own letters, give 

 him a convincing reason why he did not write to me. For he 

 tells me (in a letter I have before me), that my verbal reply at 

 Ipswich (in 1850) was considered by him "as equivalent to a 

 refusal;'^ and that the subject could not be introduced to me 

 afterwards " without the appearance of importunity .'' Having 

 in 1850 been refused the loan of the Oolitic corals, he quite 

 naturally abstained, on the year following, from making any ap- 

 plication to me for the Cambridge Palaeozoic corals. 



I should be indeed foolish were I to boast of a memory which 



