VISIT TO LONDON 257 



it at the time. Mr. Shaler felt it a privilege to meet, as he con- 

 stantly did, Darwin, Huxley, Tyndall, Lyell, Galton, Proctor, 

 Ramsay, Geoffrys, and others, and to go to the various scien- 

 tific meetings, clubs, and social reunions illuminated by their 

 presence. 



Mr. Shaler rather prided himself upon being able at a glance 

 to distinguish a Scotchman, no matter how long he had been 

 out of his native land, from any other Britisher; moreover, 

 wherever he went, he was struck with the potency of Scotch 

 influence, and in illustration of this he was fond of telling of an 

 experience he had one evening at the Royal Society (I think it 

 was the Royal Society) . Sitting at the president's right hand 

 at dinner, he casually remarked, " I am glad at last to find an 

 Englishman at the head of one of the great London societies." 

 Thanking him for the implied compliment, the president re- 

 plied, " I came from Edinburgh to London before I was twenty- 

 one and therefore may claim to be an English citizen, but I am 

 not an Englishman." 



At another dinner, where Tyndall was called upon to speak, 

 having returned not long before from the United States, he pro- 

 ceeded to give an account of what he saw and did at Niagara 

 Falls. In the midst of a thrilling description of a hairbreadth 

 escape from beneath the Bridal Veil, his eyes happening to fall 

 upon Mr. Shaler, he stood for a moment dumbfounded, and then, 

 with a look which seemed to say " Don't tell on me, old fellow," 

 continued in a more subdued and veracious strain. Before the 

 evening was over he came up to Mr. Shaler and said, " I was 

 surprised to see you here, and to tell the truth, perhaps in my 

 story of Niagara I did stretch the long bow a little, but then 

 you know how, at a dinner, one has got to make his speech 

 telling"; and, shaking hands, he went on his way convinced 

 that his American friend was not unacquainted with the cloak 

 of charity. 



While Mr. Shaler was seemingly engrossed with all the vital 

 interest of the mother country, he was not unmindful of what 



