36 



FOUNDATION AND OBJECTS 



the most conspicuous and formidable was The Times 

 newspaper, which had followed the Association with 

 the most uncompromising hostility, refusing at last 

 to print the lucubrations of the philosophers unless 

 inserted as advertisements, but continuing its sneering 

 paragraphs or contemptuous articles. Some of the 

 maligned body felt this keenly. They could not 

 realise that they had really a ludicrous side ; that 

 their feasting and holiday-making, their frequent 

 mutual laudation, and, above all, the opening which 

 their meetings afforded for any hobby-rider to air 

 his crotchets, were features which could not but 

 strike the non-scientific outsider, who, if he could 

 not appreciate the science, might not unnaturally 

 form but a poor estimate of the usefulness of the 

 Association. No one of the members winced more 

 under these attacks than Murchison. Once or twice, 

 indeed, he had written to an editor either to protest 

 against the spirit of his remarks, or to correct some 

 error in a statement of fact. Somehow the South- 

 ampton meeting [1846 the year of Murchison's 

 presidency] had evoked a renewed outburst on the 

 part of The Times. " Notwithstanding all my 

 efforts and those of my associates," Murchison re- 

 marks in his journal, " the meeting was held up to 

 ridicule in The Times. But I was nothing cowed, 

 and at the public dinner at Southampton I declaimed 

 against such ribald vulgarity and ignorance, saying 

 I was ashamed my eminent foreign friends should 

 go away with the impression that The Times in its 

 vituperation of science represented my country, and 

 I vehemently declared that tempora mutabuntur. 

 Afterwards, when visiting at Broadlands, I was com- 

 plaining to Lord Palmerston of the injustice of such 

 treatment. ' Pooh, pooh ! ' said he. ' Never mind 



