APPENDIX. 
Letter from the Rev. Thomas Newcome, M.A., Rector of Shen- 
ley, Herts, on a Plan for instituting Professorships of Zoology 
in the English Universities. 
Shenley Parsonage, 7th March, 1834. 
My pear Sir, 
Concurring with you in opinion that the Government of 
this great country does less for the encouragement of science 
than that of any other civilised state, I am not disposed to 
admit that our English universities and ecclesiastical establish- 
ment are copartners with our civil governors in the disgrace 
attaching to them by this statement of a fact. As to “ Natural 
History,” as a science, it was not “come to the birth”—was 
searce indeed conceived, or in embryo state —at the time when 
the several colleges were founded, and scholarships and fellow- 
ships endowed, by the pious and munificent of days gone by. 
These men saw and felt the want of something more imme- 
diately necessary than science itself; and it is no imputation 
on their judgment or their charity—on their heads or their 
hearts—that they provided, in the first place, and by due 
preference, “for their own.” Had they not done so, they 
would have been “worse than the infidel” of modern times, 
who endows no institution for the promotion of that science he 
affects to value as the favourite of Liberals, and the one thing 
useful.” Considering, however, how delightful a study, and 
how cheap an amusement is ever within the reach of the 
“ country parson,” in any branch of natural history, such as a 
Herbert might recommend to him by precept; and a White of 
Selborne or a Kirby by example,—such, too, that no Squire 
ean grudge the Rector his field sports in this kind, nor Bishop 
will deny or discourage their prosecution, —that natural reli- 
gion is the basis of revealed, and is itself built on some observ-— 
ation of nature*, I would propose the endowment of a Pro- 

* Romans i. 20, Psalm xix. 1. Acts xiv. 17. and xvii. 17. 
GG? 
