. APPENDIX. 25 



However sensible I may feel of the unjustifiable nature of the 

 weapons which have been turned against myself, I think it 

 will be seen, when this Appendix shall have been brought to 

 a conclusion, that I have, in no instance, been forced to make 

 good my own story, by affixing a construction to words, either 

 spoken or written, which they were not intended to convey. 

 Had I upon the occasion referred to, been given to understand 

 that Dr. Buckland's was an off-hand speech, I certainly 

 would not have opposed it to the contents of the document, 

 No. 12, with which, at present, it so unhappily clashes. As 

 it respects that document, by which it seems that a letter of 

 Dr. Buckland's, advising the abandoning the action, was lying 

 in the hands of the solicitors for the prosecution, (Messrs. 

 Stevens, Wilkinson and Satchell, of Queen Street, Cheapside), 

 it fell into my hands without the knowledge of the writer. 

 Circumstances however, which it is unnecessary to mention, 

 made me feel justified in making the use I did of it. Now 

 without enquiring as to whether or not it would have been a 

 feather in the cap of the President of the Geological Society, 

 to have aided and abetted Mr. Hawkins in prosecuting the 

 Editor of a scientific journal, the said journal having for its 

 sole object the promotion of Natural History, and the 

 said prosecution, according to Dr. Buckland's account, in- 

 volving the ruin of the party about to be prosecuted, — every 

 one I am sure must feel how desirable it would be for the re- 

 putation of the Doctor, that he should not appear to have 

 written one thing and spoken another. If what Mr. Haw- 

 kins stated to the writer of the document No. 12, was correct, 

 (as there seems every reason to suppose it was) and Dr. Buck- 

 land had advised him to drop the action, I conceive it to be 

 in that case, a moral impossibility for Dr. Buckland to have 

 pretended to entertain the intention which he did, without 

 being fully conscious that he was uttering a threat, diametri- 

 cally opposed to his real sentiments. When Mr. in 



apologising for this speech, refers it to Dr. Buckland's indig- 

 nation at the charge brought against Mr. Hawkins, he surely 

 forgets that it was not I who charged Mr. Hawkins with unfair 

 conduct in the British-Museum affair. It was the Trustees 

 of that establishment themselves, and subsequently a select 

 committee of the House of Commons, who brought the matter 

 forward : all that I did was to express a belief in the charges 

 so brought being correctly founded, the evidence which led 

 me to entertain that belief, being before the public in a printed 

 form. 



Dr. Buckland sent me, through my friend Mr. Thomas 

 Young, an invitation to breakfast Avith him on the 18th of 



