APPENDIX. 59 



I have entered into these details, in conseqnence of the 

 reply sent by Professor Owen, to a note from Mr. Lyell, a 

 copy of which reply Mr. Lyell has favoured me with ; but 

 the point involved in that correspondence may be entirely 

 lost sight of, without prejudice to the question at issue in the 

 discussion which has taken place between Mr. Lyell and 

 myself; for as I have already had occasion to state the prin- 

 cipal motive, (and one that would have induced the same 

 course, in the absence of all other considerations), which led 

 me, when describing a false molar in my own possession, as 

 the tooth of an opossum, to abstain from mentioning that a 

 true molar, in the possession of Mr. Lyell, had been previously 

 referred by Professor Owen to the same genus, was to avoid 

 the incurring the charge which in that case I deemed it pro- 

 bable might be raised against me, of having made public 

 information which had privately come to my knowledge, and 

 the right of publishing which, under the circumstances, was 

 vested in Mr, Lyell. 



I certainly esteem it unfortunate, that Mr. Lyell, when 

 communicattng to other parties his unfavourable opinion of 

 the course which I pursued, under a fallacious hope that it 

 presented no feature which could be seized upon as a handle 

 for animadversion, should have so expressen himself, as to be 

 understood to impute to me an act of greater culpability than 

 the one which I have now been called upon to defend. 



EDW. CHARLESWORTH. 



No. 37. 



103, Great Russell Street, 



Nov. 10, 1839. 

 My dear Sir, 



Some correspondence has taken place between Mr. Lyell and 

 myself, respecting the matter which I named to you when I was last, at the 

 College of Surgeons, in tlie course of which correspondence I stated to Mr. 

 Lyell, that previously to your going to Birmingham, you intimated to me 

 a suspicion that the /r.^^* discovered tooth from Kingston might possibly 

 turn out to be quadrunianous ; from the tenour of your answer to Mr. 

 Lyell's enquiry upon thi^ point, Mr. L. supposes that there must have 

 been some confusion of dates in my mind, which has led me to entertain 

 an erroneous impression. You will, however, probably remember receiving 

 a note from me when I arrived in Suffolk, written upon the half of a sheet 

 addressed to Mr. Sowerby, Jun., requesting you to forward to my printer, 

 or leave out for me your promised notice of the fossil Macacus, and as you 

 had mentioned Wednesday to me as the day on which you proposed to 

 quit London, I was surprised to find you at the Museum when I called on 

 the Saturday for the manuscript ; I was then on my way to the wood- 



