12 MEMORIAL SKETCH. 



I had a pleasing little pignus from Dr. Tuckerman lately 

 (he wrote to his brother Russell, in the letter just quoted), as 

 lie desired my father to lay out a sovereign owed by him to 

 Dr. Tuckerman in a book for me. I chose Lyell s &quot; Geology.&quot; 

 I have been much interested in reading his third book &quot; On the 

 Distribution of the Animal Kingdom.&quot; 



To this treatise he ever afterwards felt himself most 

 deeply indebted. In returning- thanks for the Lycll medal, 

 which was awarded to him in 1883, in recognition of the 

 value of his investigations into the minute structure of 

 various fossil Invertebrates, and his deep-sea researches, he 

 thus referred to this early influence : 



This distinction is yet more gratifying to me from its having 

 been founded by one whom I have held in the highest honour 

 from my boyhood, when (as I well remember) I heard Charles 

 Lyell spoken of as a young man who was advancing in the 

 Geological Society doctrines of a most heretical kind, but was 

 defending them so ably as to hold his own against the most 

 weighty opponents. The study of his &quot;Principles&quot; was not 

 only the delight of my youth, but a most valuable part of my 

 scientific training; and the privilege of subsequent intercourse 

 with him through nearly forty years was one which I ever 

 highly esteemed ; for whilst it brought me under the immediate 

 influence of his philosophic spirit, it also afforded me the 

 continual stimulus of his kindly encouragement. I would 

 recall a little incident which is doubly illustrative. When, in 

 1855, I made my monograph of the genus Orbitolites the basis 

 of a disquisition on the general subject of the variability of 

 species (a doctrine impressed on me by Dr. Prichard), I sent 

 him a copy of the memoir (published in the &quot; Philosophical 

 Transactions&quot;), with a sort of apology for having tried to make 

 so much out of what might be thought so small and trivial a 

 subject; he replied with a most kindly approval, of the object 

 and manner of my work, adding &quot; any single point is really the 

 universe,&quot; a remark whose pregnancy left an impression on my 

 mind that time has only deepened. 



Beside the influence of Lyell s &quot; Principles &quot; must be set 



