12 MEMORIAL SKETCH. 



I had a pleasing little pigmis from Dr. Tuckerman lately 

 (he wrote to his brother Russell, in the letter just quoted), as 

 he desired my father to lay out a sovereign owed by him to 

 Dr. Tuckerman in a book for me. I chose Lyell's " Geology." 

 I have been much interested in reading his third book " On the 

 Distribution of the Animal Kingdom." 



To this treatise he ever afterwards felt himself most 

 deeply indebted. In returning thanks for the Lyell medal, 

 which was awarded to him in 1 88 3, in recognition of the 

 value of his investigations into the minute structure of 

 various fossil Invertebrates, and his deep-sea researches, he 

 thus referred to this early influence : — 



This distinction is yet more gratifying to me from its having 

 been founded by one whom I have held in the highest honour 

 from my boyhood, when (as I well remember) I heard Charles 

 Lyell spoken of as a young man who was advancing in the 

 Geological Society doctrines of a most heretical kind, but was 

 defending them so ably as to hold his own against the most 

 weighty opponents. The study of his " Principles " was not 

 only the delight of my youth, but a most valuable part of my 

 scientific training ; and the privilege of subsequent intercourse 

 with him through nearly forty years was one which I ever 

 highly esteemed ; for whilst it brought me under the immediate 

 influence of his philosophic spirit, it also afforded me the 

 continual stimulus of his kindly encouragement. I would 

 recall a litde incident which is doubly illustrative. When, in 

 1855, I made my monograph of the genus Orbitolites the basis 

 of a disquisition on the general subject of the variability of 

 species (a doctrine impressed on me by Dr. Prichard), I sent 

 him a copy of the memoir (published in the " Philosophical 

 Transactions "), with a sort of apology for having tried to make 

 so much out of what might be thought so small and trivial a 

 subject ; he replied with a most kindly approval of the object 

 and manner of my work, adding " any single point is really the 

 universe," — a remark whose pregnancy left an impression on my 

 mind that time has only deepened. 



Beside the influence of Lyell's " Principles " must be set 



