CoLENso. — Status quo. 473 



hundred specimens. I gave Professor Oweia the exchisive 

 privilege of describing the specimens." And then, in a foot- 

 note, Dr. Mantell adds, "The following is an extract from a 

 letter now before me from Professor Owen, dated ' Eoyal 

 College of Surgeons, Christmas Day, 1847 ' : ' I feel very sensibly 

 the mark of kindness and confidence which you have given me 

 in placing your son's unique rarities in my hands for descrip- 

 tion ; the more so as this liberal and generous conduct 

 contrasts with that of others from whom I had expected 

 better things.' " (L.c, " Appendix," p. 487 .)_ _ 



So that it appears the utmost kindness, disinterestedness, 

 and liberality was existing and active between Dr. Mantell 

 and Professor Owen — not only at that early time (and during 

 a long subsequent period), but with especial reference to the 

 discovery of themoa and of the moa-bones, when the Eeviewer 

 so diligently laboured to place Dr. Mantell's conduct in the 

 most malevolent light. And to call Dr. Mantell's few simple 

 and truthful remarks "attempts at detraction from tJie merit of 

 the discovery " .' Jam satis ! 



Before I leave this portion I would also observe, seeing 

 so much stress is apparently laid by the Eeviewer on my paper 

 on the moa in the Annals of Natural History for 1844, as being 

 the only one known to Dr. Mantell, that that very paper was 

 kindly inserted in that serial by Professor Owen himself (who 

 had received it from Sir W. J. Hooker, the Director of the 

 Eoyal Botanic Gardens at Kew),* who also subsequently 

 favourably refers to it in his large work (passim).] Moreover, 

 I know not of any difference in that paper as published in 

 England, and dated " May 1, 1842," and the same published in 

 the Tasmanian Journal in the previous year. x\ud, further, 

 the Eeviewer takes care to tell us that my paper ("Account of 

 my Excursion," &c., in 1841-42, being mainly botanical) in the 

 Tasmanian Journal was " j^rinted in 1814 ;" but he omits to 

 state what is given by the editor, within brackets, at the head of 

 my paper — namely, "The following paper was transmitted by 

 the author twelve months ago, but its publication in the Tas- 

 manian Jb'i^r?ia/ has been unavoidably postponed " {I.e., p. 210). 

 And, since the Eeviewer also says, " We have been at the 

 pains to look through the numbers of the Tasmanian Journal, 

 and we find " (as above), why did he not notice what is pro- 



* Sir W. J. Hooker thus mentions it in the London Journal of Botany : 

 "We have lately received from Mr. Colenso a valuable monograph of 

 several new ferns of New Zealand ; and an admirable memoir on the 

 fossil bones of a bird allied to the ostrich, which, together with the speci- 

 mens of the bones themselves, I have placed in the hands of Professor 

 Owen " (loc. cit., vol. iii., p. 3, Jan. No., 1844). 



t " Memoirs on the Extinct Wingless Birds of New Zealand," vol. i., 

 p. 115. 



