Autobiography 13 



in the latter end of the year 1850, when I found that it 

 was printed and published, and that a huge packet of 

 separate copies awaited me. When I hear some of my 

 young friends complain of want of sympathy and encour- 

 agement, I am inclined to think that my naval life was 5 

 not the least valuable part of my education. 



Three years after my return were occupied by a bat- 

 tle between my scientific friends on the one hand and 

 the Admiralty on the other, as to whether the latter ought, 

 or ought not, to act up to the spirit of a pledge they had 10 

 given to encourage officers who had done scientific work 

 by contributing to the expense of publishing mine. At 

 last the Admiralty, getting tired, I suppose, cut short the 

 discussion by ordering me to join a ship, which thing I 

 declined to do, and as Rastignac, in the Pere Goriot, says 15 

 to Paris, I said to London, "a nous deux." I desired to 

 obtain a professorship of either physiology or comparative 

 anatomy, and as vacancies occurred I applied, but in vain. 

 My friend, Professor Tyndall, and I were candidates at 

 the same time, he for the chair of physics and I for that of 20 

 natural history in the University of Toronto, which, fortu- 

 nately, as it turned out, would not look at either of us. 

 I say fortunately, not from any lack of respect for To- 

 ronto, but because I soon made up my mind that London 

 was the place for me, and hence I have steadily declined 25 

 the inducements to leave it, which have at various times 

 been offered. At last, in 1854, on the translation of my 

 warm friend Edward Forbes, to Edinburgh, Sir Henry de 

 la Beche, the Director-General of the Geological Survey, 

 offered me the post Forbes had vacated of Paleontologist 30 

 and Lecturer on Natural History. I refused the former 

 point-blank, and accepted the latter only provisionally, tell- 

 ing Sir Henry that I did not care for fossils, and that 

 I should give up natural history as soon as I could get a 



