OPPOSITION 35 



course, the P.G.S.L." ' (i.e. the president of the Geolo- 

 gical Society of London Murchison himself). 



A few years later the Association came under 

 fire from the pen of Charles Dickens. In 1837-39 

 he wrote for Bentley's Miscellany a series of con- 

 tributions subsequently collected as the Mudfog 

 Papers, and in two of these he dealt trenchantly 

 with the first and second meetings of ' the Mudfog 

 Association for the Advancement of Everything/ 

 Herein we may read of the doings and sayings of 

 Professors Snore, Doze, and Wheezy; Messrs. 

 Muddlebranes and Drawley, Rummun and Pumpkin- 

 skull, and many other such, duly set forth in sectional 

 transactions, in which the sections of Zoology and 

 Botany, Anatomy, Statistics and the rest are followed 

 by that of Umbugology and Ditchwaterisics, and 

 the whole is served up with a spice of humour of 

 characteristic flavour, if possibly, to present taste, 

 rather crude. 



Looking forward a little, we find that this class 

 of opposition persisted for some years after the 

 Association had well established itself. Murchison's 

 biographer refers as follows to this opposition, in- 

 dicating its rather flimsy basis, and incidentally 

 revealing what might have been interpreted as a 

 singularly ingenuous piece of journalistic touting for 

 advertisement : 



' The British Association was now fifteen years 

 old. It had come through its infancy so well that 

 there could be no doubt of its vigorous growth. 

 Nevertheless, some of its early detractors continued 

 their opposition, to which piquancy was given by the 

 various ways in which derision and contempt could 

 be expressed. Among these persistent enemies, 



