416 SCIENCE ORGANISATION : SOCIETIES, ETC. 



distinction and the claim of each branch of science for recogni- 

 tion in its turn, between rewarding the man who had arrived 

 and encouraging the man who was working his way up. 



Ofi&cial recognition of this kind was very different from 

 a worker's acknowledgment of his predecessors' labours ; 

 that was a proper recognition to receive, and indeed mere 

 honesty to give. Personally, he was quite unconcerned if he 

 found, on occasion, that certain continental botanists ignored 

 the prior work of himself or his English friends, though he 

 condemned such lack of frankness. * I always feel,' he tells 

 Asa Gray (March 29, 1857), * that we must so often unintention- 

 ally ignore one another's observations, that we can ill afford 

 to make the least of those we do know of.' The only thing 

 that struck fire from him was neglect of his father's merits 

 or the discourtesy of failing to acknowledge his abundant 

 generosity. 



The first of the letters that follow on the award of a Eoyal 

 medal is in reply to a letter from Huxley, which is given in 

 the ' Life of T. H. Huxley,' vol. i, chap. 8, under date of 

 November 6, together with a response as generous as Hooker's 

 from Edward Forbes. Huxley, who was on the Eoyal Society 

 Council, explained to each of them, his close friends, why he 

 could not vote for one to the exclusion of the other, and there- 

 fore voted for both ! 



November 7, 1854. 



My dear Huxley, — I am very much obliged for your 

 kind note although quite uncalled for either as apologetic 

 or explanatory, for I fully appreciated and approved your 

 sfrings of action. I quite enjoyed having a competition 

 and should have been very sorry for the sake of science 

 and my own that no one else had been proposed. Of course 

 I do not in any w^ay look upon my claims and Forbes's as 

 coming into competition, but do upon the claims of Botany 

 and my etceteras and Palaeontology and Forbes's etceteras 

 as having come into direct competition. There has been 

 but one honour given to Botany by the R.S., that is the 

 Copley medal to Brown, whereas Zoologists, Palaeontologists 

 and Geologists galore have been honoured over and over 

 again. I have always thought and still think that both 



