APPENDIX. 23 



this most awkward interrogation has been responded to, but 

 so far as it may lie in my power, I must guard against its 

 going forth to that circle in which the journal under my 

 direction is supported, that at present I owe anything to the 

 intercession of Dr. Buckland, or to the clemency of his pro- 

 tege, Mr. Thomas Hawkins. I have been let alone, because 

 the entrapping a person into the unguarded expression of an 

 opinion, happily does not involve the condition of the sen- 

 timent conveyed by that expression having been unguardedly 

 anived at ; and because my pseudo-antagonist, upon being 

 foiled in his calculations, was much too wide aw^ake to bum 

 his fingers any farther. 



The commencement of proceedings against me in another 

 quarter, of a tendency far more to be dreaded than any mea- 

 sures of a legal description, and upon the consideration of 

 which I have next to enter, has left me no alternative but that 

 of coming forward and openly showing that T have not been 

 the party to fight shy of this contest ; but that hitherto, so far 

 as it has proceeded, I have met in a straightforward and un- 

 compromising manner, the disgraceful litigation with which I 

 have been threatened. If by reason of this publication, 

 and after the interval of time which has now elapsed, Mr. 

 Hawkins should be so ill-advised as to go before a jury, in 

 the hope of getting a farthing damages, for a pretended in- 

 jury which he himself had most assuredly a hand in bring- 

 ing about, it will be found that instead of simply pleading 

 7iot guilty to the assumed libel, I have placed a justification 

 on record. Having done this, unless the question shall come 

 to a legal decision, and unless it shall then be satisfactorily 

 shown that there were no grounds for the belief which I 

 have been led to entertain, I occupy, in relation to the whole 

 affair, let its merits be what they may, a position, which 

 ought in common justice to protect me from even the whisper 

 of an injurious imputation,' 



Since the appearance of the first 22 pages of this appendix 

 (a period of two months having now elapsed) I have received 



' I avail myself of this opportunity to acknowledge the warm interest 

 which from the first commencement of the proceedings, has been taken in 

 the case by my solicitor, Mr. Richardson, a Fellow of the Geological So- 

 ciety, and a valued correspondent of the Magazine of Natural History. 

 Immediately upon the issue of the writ, he sent to secure for me the ser- 

 vices of Mr. Sergeant Wilde, but that eminent member of the bar had al- 

 ready been retained by the opposite party. 



