xii LIFE OF SIR JOHN LUBBOCK 



renders singularly appropriate. Vivid witness 

 to the value of his work in the world was aptly- 

 given by another who knew him well, and spoke 

 of his life as " one of the most useful that was 

 ever lived." Assuredly that is not praise too 

 high. This, at all events, I may say, that though 

 I claim the privilege of knowing him, with some 

 intimacy, in his later years, it is only while 

 studying the correspondence connected with the 

 scientific work to which he devoted himself 

 before he went into Parliament, that I quite 

 realised the very high estimation in which he was 

 held, as a scientist, by such men as Sir Charles 

 Lyell, the great Darwin, Tyndall, Huxley, and 

 so on. These, and the like giants received him, 

 and estimated him, as one of their own select, 

 yet great company. It is an appreciation which 

 disposes, for ever, of that ill-considered criticism, 

 suggested by his extraordinarily varied talent, 

 that " bankers considered him a great scientist 

 and men of science a great banker." The testi- 

 mony of the following pages will be poorly 

 presented indeed if it does not suffice to dis- 

 abuse the reader of any impression of the kind 

 which this sorry epigram may have suggested. 

 It might be thought that any evidence from 

 within the bank at 15 Lombard Street is suspect 

 of partiality ; but at least that is not to be said 

 of more public business in which he was con- 

 cerned. Sir Charles Fremantle, at one time 

 Master of the Mint, and later associated with 

 Lord Avebury as Vice-Chairman of the Council 

 of Foreign Bondholders, of which Lord Avebury 

 himself was long, and for two distinct periods, 



