1849.] LORD STANHOPE. 345 



at Chevening with Lord Mahon, who did me the great honour 

 of calling on me, and how he heard of me I can't guess. I 

 was charmed with Lady Mahon, and any one might have been 

 proud at the pieces of agreeableness which came from her 

 beautiful lips with respect to you. I like old Lord Stanhope 

 very much ; though he abused Geology and Zoology heartily. 

 " To suppose that the Omnipotent God made a world, found 

 it a failure, and broke it up, and then made it again, and 

 again broke it up, as the Geologists say, is all fiddld faddle. 

 Describing Species of birds and shells, &c., is all fiddle 

 faddle. ..." 



I am heartily glad we shall meet at Birmingham, as I trust 

 we shall, if my health will but keep up. I work now every 

 day at the Cirripedia for 2\ hours, and so get on a little, but 

 very slowly. I sometimes, after being a whole week employed 

 and having described perhaps only two species, agree men- 

 tally with Lord Stanhope, that it is all fiddle faddle ; how- 

 ever, the other day I got a curious case of a unisexual, instead 

 of hermaphrodite cirripede, in which the female had the com- 

 mon cirripedial character, and in two valves of her shell had 

 two little pockets, in each of which she kept a little husband ; 

 I do not know of any other case where a female invariably has 

 two husbands. I have one still odder fact, common to several 

 species, namely, that though they are hermaphrodite, they 

 have small additional, or as I shall call them, complemental 

 males, one specimen itself hermaphrodite had no less than 

 seven, of these complemental males attached to it. Truly the 

 schemes and wonders of Nature are illimitable. But I am 

 running on as badly about my cirripedia as about Geology ; 

 it makes me groan to think that probably I shall never again 

 have the exquisite pleasure of making out some new district, 

 of evolving geological light out of some troubled dark region. 

 So I must make the best of my Cirripedia. . . . 



