60 APPENDIX. 



cutters in Fleet Street, with the block on which was the drawing- of the 

 third, and then newly-discovered fragment, and which block I showed to 

 you, stating that I considered the fragment as marsupial, and that I was 

 about to publish it as such. It was then that the observation fell from 

 you to which I have alluded, and of which I have as clear a recollection 

 as of any one circumstance that ever occurred to me. — You were busily 

 occupied at the time, I think, upon your British Association Report, and 

 you made no farther enquiries about the specimen, either then or the 

 following evening which I spent at your house. 



Considering the relative position in which I and Mr. Lyell have 

 stood with respect to each other, and that there has not been on his side 

 any disposition shown to make a return for information communicated by 

 myself, I do not feel that there was the slightest obligation on my part, to 

 open any negociation with him prior the publication of the third fossil 

 tooth ; and the opinions which he entertains, or affects to entertain, upon the 

 subject, are therefore a matter of perfectindifference to me, except inasmuch 

 as the expression of those opinions may injure me in the estimation of 

 others. But as it respects yourself, if you feel (as Mr. Lyell wishes to 

 make other parties believe you do), that my part in the transaction involved 

 knowingly any one thing that was inconsistent with candour and courtesy, 

 that such a feeling should exist, would be to me a source of extreme re- 

 gret. The idea of anticipating you in any announcement, never once 

 crossed my thoughts, for I all along looked upon the matter as a step in 

 English tertiary geology, resting between Lyell and myself ; and having, 

 so far back as 1837, determined the mammiferous character of the Jirst 

 tooth, and examined the deposit to which it belonged, the two really essen- 

 tial points in its history, I felt that I had a right to have a. finger in the pie, 

 and seized the opportunity chance threw in my way. The subsequent 

 location of the fossil in any one particular genus, was a matter so little 

 affecting the abstract importance of the first fact (at least in the case of 

 the opossum), that the possibility of a quarrel about priority upon that 

 point never occurred to me. I trust that I should never attempt to grasp 

 at scientific notoriety at the expense of creating a real foundation for the 

 slightest shade of discord between myself and others occupied in similar 

 pursuits ; but at the same time, when having a character to deal with like 

 Lyell's, I would never shrink when it lay in my power from securing all to 

 which I felt myself legitimately entitled. 



I gave Mr. Lyell a letter of introduction to Mr. Colchester, whose 

 interest in geology solely had its origin in the friendship existing between 

 us ; and having received the greatest assistance and attention from that 

 gentleman, Mr. Lyell writes to impress him with the notion that I had 

 made a dishonourable use of the fossil, which, on a late occasion, he (Mr. 

 Colchester) entrusted to me ; Mr. Lyell's object being (as I think there can 

 be little doubt), that Mr. Colchester's future discoveries should pass into 

 more conscientious hands. Had the case, as it regards myself, been ever 

 so bad, common delicacy should have kept Mr. Lyell from broaching the 

 matter to Mr. Colchester, he being one among half-a-dozen of my private 

 friends to whom Mr. Lyell had gone with letters of introduction from me ; 

 but under the actual attendant circumstances, I look upon the act as so 

 utterly despicable, that henceforth, the only respect which I can entertain 

 for the author of the ' Principles of Geology,' will be that to which he is 

 entitled from the position he occupies in the scientific world. 



I hope, in the event of Mr. Lyell consulting you upon any other 

 particular in this disagreeable affair, that the portion of the correspond- 

 ence with which it may be connected, may be placed before you, that no 



