418 MAN OF SCIENCE. 



letters regarding it are of a very gratifying character. 

 One, in especial, from the first comparative anatomist in 

 the world (Richard Owen) is singularly warm-hearted 

 and cheering ; and as you will not set it clown to the 

 score of vulgar vanity, I must just give you an extract, 

 partly in order to show you, as one of my pupils, that I 

 was not mistaken in supposing that the least popular 

 portions of my book would be exactly those to which a 

 certain class of students would attach most interest. " I 

 have just received and, setting all other things aside, 

 devoured your Asterolepis of Stromness ! I find it not 

 so hard and indigestible as it may prove to the Ves- 

 tigesians ! I have been instructed and delighted by it." 

 I have also derived a heartfelt encouragement from it. 

 It is almost the first contemporary work in which I have 

 found some favourite ideas of my own weighed out and 

 pronounced upon. This cheers one up after the de- 

 spondency that will, in spite of reason, creep over one 

 through the blank silence in which one's favourite works 

 are received by those in whose especial behoof they have 

 been cogitated and printed. I allude to the host of 

 estimable anatomists, anthropotomists, and zoologists 

 that we live and move amongst in our scientific coteries 

 of London." This, you will agree with me, is worth 

 whole volumes of ignorant criticism ; a newspaper re- 

 viewer, very favourable in the main, speaks of my 

 " rather tedious introduction ; " it was, however, not for 

 newspaper reviewers but for men such as Professor 

 Owen that that introduction was written ; and the Pro- 

 fessor, you see, does not deem it tedious.' 



In the autumn of 1850 the annual meeting of the 

 British Association for the advancement of science was 

 held in Edinburgh. In the beginning of June the fol- 

 lowing note from Sir Roderick Murchison reached Miller. 



