AWARD OF THE ROYAL MEDALS. 437 



be bestowed among the cultivators of natural history, 

 the council deemed it expedient to look abroad for a 

 fit subject, and to bestow it upon one whose labours 

 in the minutiae of his science have been indeed in- 

 teresting, but whose merits, in comparison to those of 

 the first discoverer of the system of circular affinities, 

 are much the same as those which exist between a 

 numherer of the stars, and the discoverer of the 

 laws of their motion ! Was there no member of the 

 council present, at this most extraordinary adjudi- 

 cation, sufficiently acquainted with the philosophy 

 of natural history, or of those Baconian principles 

 upon which it should be prosecuted, who protested 

 against an award so signally unjust to native genius? 

 We have the pleasure of personally knowing the 

 amiable and excellent professor at Geneva; and 

 we are thoroughlj' convinced, that his surprise at 

 receiving this medal, knowing and appreciating as he 

 does, the splendid talents of our countryman, must 

 have been fully as great as that experienced by the 

 zoologists of England when first informed of the 

 event. If the value of a scientific discovery is to be 

 measured by the universality of its application, by 

 its effect upon all existing systems, annihilating some, 

 and breaking up all, by the promulgation of a new 

 and universal law (the greatest of which zoology at 

 present can boast), then does the discovery in 

 question leave all others, save one*, at an immeasur- 

 able distance. We presume not to criticise the de- 



* We allude to the discovery of the metamorphosis of the 

 Cirripeda and of the Crustacea, by Thompson, before alluded 

 to, p. 345. 



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