44 APPENDIX. 



Mr. Hawkins, and become my prosecutor. Nor do I believe 

 it would be an easy matter to find a jury willing to attach 

 weight to any statements he might depose to on the trial, 

 after the duplicity which I have shown him to be capable of, 

 and after the equivocal nature of the evidence laid before 

 the Committee appointed by the House of Commons, to en- 

 quire generally into the affairs and management of the Na- 

 tional Museum. 



I shall say but few words by way of apology for having 

 gone into the consideration of subjects which have little or 

 no relation to the immediate cause of this Appendix being 

 issued. The necessity for the publication, as mentioned on 

 the cover of the Magazine for December last, arises out of 

 matters connected with the late important discovery near 

 Woodbridge, — that of monkeys and opossums, or at least their 

 fossilized relics, existing in the London clay. I may, how- 

 ever, state in general terms, that though neither of the sub- 

 jects already touched upon, was alone of sufficient import- 

 ance to involve such a measure as the present ; yet, having 

 to enter the lists with Mr. Lyell and Prof. Owen, I have 

 taken advantage of the opportunity to repel attacks in other 

 quarters. Should there happen to be a lover of Natural His- 

 tory, who otherwise might have felt well disposed towards 

 the Magazine, or the Editor who conducts it, but that he 

 has come in contact with Mr. Neville Wood, Mr. Thos. 

 Hawkins, or Dr. Buckland, he will now know how to mea- 

 sure the amount of importance to which their several state- 

 ments or opinions are respectively entitled. No man having 

 the slightest pretension to honourable feeling, will allege 

 that, privately, to the injury of another, which puhlicly he 

 would flinch from avowing, if openly called upon to do so. 

 The President of the Geological Society of London is at 

 the pains to originate a report, that the Editor of an English 

 scientific journal is on the brink of ruin. A channel is put 

 before him, in which, if he could, he might be expected to 

 offer something like a pretext for having ventured on so in- 

 iurious a statement, but not a syllable is advanced either to 

 justify or palliate the act. It therefore can only be inferred, 

 that he resorted to a gratuitous calumny, for purposes which 

 the preceding history will have made too readily apparent. 

 The first London-clay mammiferous tooth obtained by 

 Mr. Colchester, in the parish of Kingston (there called Ky- 



