48 APPENDIX. 



been privy to Prof. Owen's determination to that effect. Now 

 if the comparing a fossil tooth with a series of recent teeth, 

 and the giving an opinion as to which of the recent teeth 

 most nearly approximated the fossil, had involved in the case 

 of a genus so well known as Didelphis, any very profound 

 knowledge of comparative anatomy, then (in the absence of 

 good reason to the contrary), I might have been blamed for 

 the omission. As it was however, if Mr. Lyell felt, as it is to 

 be presumed he did, that he should be rendering the state a 

 service by lowering me in the estimation of my fellow culti- 

 vators of Natural History, and by putting them on their 

 guard with respect to me, he surely might have waited until 

 I should have committed some act in\ olving a heavier amount 

 of culpability than the one which it is admitted he made use 

 of to my prejudice. The tooth in Mr. LyelFs possession, 

 which I spoke of as mammiferous, but without saying that it 

 was the tooth of an opossum, happened all the time to be 

 the tooth of a monkey, and what is more, Mr. Lyell knew 

 perfectly well it was the tooth of a monkey, when he penned 

 the letter. No. 33, complaining of my not having called it 

 the tooth of an OpossUm. I felt it somewhat humiliating to 

 have seriously to combat an accusation, so absurdly frivolous 

 in its natm'e, although very far from frivolous if viewed in 

 relation to the purposes for which it had been called into be- 

 ing. In justification of my silence I informed Mr. Lyell 

 that one of my reasons for not stating this tooth, (No. 1), to 

 be that of an opossum, was, that Prof. Owen himself, ( after 

 Mr. Lyell had left for Scotland), suspected the possibility of 

 his having mistaken a monkey's tooth for an opossum's, and 

 mentioned that suspicion to myself. A monkey's jaw from 

 the same locality as the supposed opossum's tooth, having in 

 the mean while been brought to him, readily explaining 

 why such a suspicion should arise. Prof. Owen upon being 

 referred to by Mr. Lyell, and also by myself, most distinctly 

 denies that he gave me any caution of the kind, grounding 

 the assertion upon the statement that he felt confident the 

 tooth. No. 1, was that of an opossum, and that he allowed 

 Mr. Lyell to publish it as such at Birmingham, upon his au- 

 thority. — Now the real point of importance at issue here is, 

 that there being a sacrifice of truth on either one side or the 

 other, with whom does it rest } Fortunately there is a document 

 accessible which will help to decide this question. I quote 

 fi'om the Annals of Natural History, for November, 1839, 

 the following passage to which the name of Prof Owen 

 stands as the author. The fossil referred to is the supposed 



