APPENDIX. 53 



geons, had not tlie courage to persist in his charge against 

 me, although he well knew I could bring no witnesses to dis- 

 prove his accusation. All that I could have relied was 

 circumstantial evidence, and the great improbability that if I 

 had intended to appropriate the discovery of another party, 

 I should have made that party the confidant of my intention. 

 Professor Owen however thought it prudent to shift his ground, 

 and, like Mr. Lyell, to discuss something which I had either 

 really done, or really intended to do ; and Mr. Searles Wood 

 having requested me to furnish an osteological description of 

 the monkey's jaw, to accompany his announcement of its dis- 

 covery, Professor Owen makes, or wishes to make it appear 

 that my being about to do this, was what he had to alledge 

 against me. He then goes through the farce of collecting 

 evidence to show that I was prepared to furnish this descrip- 

 tion, and writes a letter to Mr. Wood, deliberately telling him 

 that I had denied any such intention. He also informs Mr. 

 Wood, that having had the civility, as one of the conserva- 

 tors of the Museum of the College of Surgeons, to tell him 

 what tribe of animals the jaw belonged to, neither Mr, Wood 

 or any one else had a right to publish a description of that 

 fossil but himself, and that he got the fossil in question out of 

 my hands, by insisting upon this principle. Now, Mr. Wood 

 knew perfectly well, what it was that Prof. Owen had charged me 

 with, and by what stratagem it was that he (Prof Owen) had 

 the publishing a description which otherwise would have been 

 drawn up by myself He therefore, at once taxes him with 

 having shifted his accusation, and at the same time gives him 

 to understand, that he does not believe any such thing took 

 place during my visit to the College of Surgeons in August, 

 as that originally stated by the Professor to have occurred. 

 Prof Owen finding that his position was anything but a 

 satisfactory one, and that he was in a fair way of making as 

 lame a business of the appropriation story in the case of tlie 

 monkey, as his coadjutor, Mr. Lyell, had done for him in 

 the case of the opossum, — judges it the safest plan to make a 

 merit of necessity, and to state that he never meant it to be 

 understood that I intended to do anything either Jraudulent 

 or dishonourable ; in other words — that the idea of there being 

 " fraud" or " dishonour" in one naturalist appropriating the 

 discoveries of another, was an idea peculiar to Mr. Wood 

 and myself, and not entertained by him. 



I think any one who will read the correspondence, will have 

 little difficulty in understanding why Prof Owen at the 

 eleventh hour, volunteered the admission in question. It 

 was not a sense of justice to me that called it forth, depend- 



