OPPOSITION 37 



them ; a man who is not Times-piooi cannot succeed 

 in life ! ' " ' 



Edward Forbes, a strong supporter of the Associa- 

 tion, and with his peculiar breadth of interest a 

 particularly useful recruiting-sergeant for its member- 

 ship list, forcibly observed, with reference to this same 

 meeting (1846), that 'the Association never gained 

 more friends than through this campaign of The Times, 

 conducted by a jesting puppet, whose strings were 

 pulled by sneering and pseudo-scientific humbugs/ 



It is fair (if scarcely necessary) to add that in later 

 years The Times made the amende, and that the 

 Association has become one of those public institu- 

 tions the reports of whose proceedings are recognised 

 by the Press generally as necessary to the information 

 of the public. It is perhaps no matter for wonder 

 that individual authors of communications to the 

 Association are at times disconcerted at the scanty 

 measure or doubtful accuracy of Press notices accorded 

 to their work : to the layman, on the other hand, it 

 is rather a point worthy of admiration that the 

 representatives of daily newspapers should handle 

 the complex and frequently unfamiliar subject- 

 matter of an Association meeting with the degree of 

 efficiency which they now attain. And their criticism 

 of the functioning of the Association as a public body 

 has not infrequently been pertinent : not least so 

 that of The Times itself. 



Though records are none too numerous, we need 

 not quote Murchison as the Association's sole cham- 

 pion against its detractors. Lyell, 1 indeed, after the 

 Newcastle meeting in 1838, wrote : ' All that I saw 



1 Life, Letters, and Journals of Sir Charles Lyell, Bart., edited by 

 his sister-in-law, Mrs. Lyell. London, 1881. 



