()(y APPENDIX. 



vehicle for circulating the details of a private misunder- 

 standing, with which the scientific public is wholly uncon- 

 cerned. 



I am, Sir, 



Your obedient Servant, 



CHA^. LYELL. 



Editor of the Magazine of 

 Natural History. 



No. 44. 

 Sir, 



December 15. 



I return you your letter of the 1 1th instant, that before its 

 publication you may correct an error occurring in the middle of the second 

 page, where the words "August number" should be September number. 

 If this error be merely accidental, it can be easily rectified, but if it have 

 arisen from a mistaken belief that my paper on the fossil opossum was 

 published in August instead of September, that belief will help to explain 

 some passages in your communication to me of November the 1st. 



When I wrote my notice of the fossil No. 3, I knew that whatever 

 you might say about the history of No. 1, would, by the Athenaeum re- 

 port, have, by some days, priority of record over mine ; and this being the 

 case, for reasons which I have fully explained, I thought it better to say 

 nothing more of the tooth No. 1, than what I had learned from my own 

 examination of that fossil before it quitted Mr. Colchester's cabinet. 

 The subsequent result, and my history of the attendant circumstances, 

 must, I think, satisfy every one that this course was the right one to pur- 

 sue. Before the termination of the Bii-mingham meeting, I sent to my 

 friend Professor Phillips some separate copies of the three communica- 

 tions having reference to the discoveiy at Kyson ; thinking they would be 

 distributed and read with great interest by the members of the Geological 

 section. I might have affixed a date to my paper, as it was drawn up on 

 August the 24th ; and this would have given me an apparent priority over 

 your's, which is recorded as read August 28th, but I attached no date to 

 my communication, and it therefore can only be referred to in relation to 

 the month of September. 



I have received from Professor Owen a statement to be published with 

 the rest of the correspondence. Professor Owen, finding that I am 

 likely to be able to refute the charge he preferred against me in the letter 

 of which I sent you a copy, now labours hard to make it appear that Mr. 

 Wood had no right to commit to me the drawing up a description of the 

 fragment No. 2, and that this intention of describing the fossil, was the 

 one that caused his painful impression. Now the " discovery of the qua- 

 drumanous nature" of a tooth, can only mean the finding out that its 

 proper location is in the group Quadrumana, as opposed to the Mammalia 

 generally. A construction differing from this cannot be forced upon the 

 words ; and it is idle for Professor Owen to calculate upon mystifiing the 

 whole affair by the extraordinary communication he has sent me, or that 

 the palpable inconsistencies between the contents of his first letter to me, 

 and the documents which he has subsequently penned, will not be pointed 

 out and readily perceived. 



The subscribers and contributors to the ' Magazine of Natural His- 

 tory' constitute the only portion of the public with which I am imrae- 



