182 Remarks on Mr. Hamilton's Anniversary Address. 



the Society in a very different light from that in which it appears 

 in the extract from the Anniversary Address. 



In concluding my comment on this extract, I have to apolo- 

 gise for one great mistake of omission, for which I hereby express 

 my sincere regret. — I ought to have thanked Mr. Hamilton for 

 his ample and courteous apology, made after he had discovered 

 his mistake about the integrity of my paper. Not that I then 

 grudged the grateful words of courtesy ; for I have ever regarded 

 him as a well-informed, honourable, and truth-loving man ; and 

 spite of my plain and homely words, he will not, I trust, think 

 me guilty of any personal disrespect towards him. If I differ from 

 a truth-loving man on questions of fact or opinion, the greatest 

 respect I can pay him is to tell him plainly what are the points 

 on which we differ. My apology for the fault of omission is, 

 that I was suffering during the whole month of May 1854 from 

 the lassitude of long-continued ill-health. I had been worried by 

 what I thought a very perverse misinterpi'etation of my conduct ', 

 writing was hateful to me; and when my paper came back I 

 threw it on one side, after just turning over its pages, and then 

 dismissed the subject from my thoughts. 



Except as a bar against some future charge of doctoring, I do 

 not believe that it would again have seen the light, especially as I 

 had before me the materials for a second paper on the PaltEOzoic 

 System of England * ; and I declare, in all sincerity and without 

 reserve, that after the paper (which was read on the 3rd of May) 

 was returned to me by Mr. Hamilton, I regarded it as my un- 

 doubted property ; and it never crossed my thoughts that any 

 member of the Council (however stern a vindicator of the rights 

 of the Geological Society), and least of all that Mr. Hamilton, 

 could ever dream of censuring me for publishing my paper, 

 should I afterwards think fit to do so. The reader may perhaps 

 think that I have dwelt upon the previous question at too much 

 length. To him it may be a matter of small moment ; but to 

 me it is of deep personal interest, for it involves the question of 

 my fair and honest dealing with a public body. 



* I may remark, that when the substance of the second paper (here 

 alluded to) was read before the British Association in 1854, the charge of 

 previous doctoring was insinuated against me somewhat uncourteoush'. If 

 my second paper, drawn up in 1854 (and pubhshed in the December Number 

 of the Philosophical ilagaziue), was any improvement upon the previous 

 paper (drawn up in 1853), the improvement was due exclusively to my own 

 renewed field work. Not an atom of it was borrowed from any of my oppo- 

 nents. The chief advantage I gained in the summer of 1854 was the clear- 

 ing away (by my own held work along with Prof. M'Coy) what I thought 

 the misinterpretation of certain sections in South Wales which had been 

 made by my opponents. 



