304 LIFE OF SIR JOHN LUBBOCK ch. xliv 



Spencer, Sir J. Hooker, Professor Busk, and so 

 on, but it is possible too that they bore a wider 

 meaning. They indicate a truth of which even 

 Lord Avebury himself was perhaps not quite 

 fully conscious — yet a truth of which we find 

 sufficient evidence — ^that in spite of his faculty 

 for friendship, which was very considerable, and 

 in spite of the great variety of acquaintance 

 which his many-sided life brought to him, the 

 men of science, those with whom he had worked 

 in the fellowship of the earlier and more im- 

 pressionable years, were those whom he regarded 

 as his real life companions. It was to them, to 

 their " little group " that, in his heart, he felt 

 himself to belong. 



