reflecting on the University of Cambridge. 285 



of perfect truth, that when we parted I had not the most distant 

 thought that he (M. Edwards) was dissatisfied with the arrange- 

 ments he had made at Cambridge, or wished to have them 

 changed. 



Had MM. Edwards and Hairae thought good, in their great 

 essay on the Bi'itish Oohtic Corals (1851), to charge the Uni- 

 versity with unwonted ilHberality for ha\"ing " rejected " their 

 apphcation for certain species in our Museum, they might have 

 done so with, at least, verbal truth ; although such a charge 

 would, I think, have been uncourteous and unjust. But having 

 let this occasion slip, and as if to make amends for this forbear- 

 ance, they published their charge in 1852 (transferring it from 

 one memoir in which it might have a})peared, with a show of 

 reason, to another in which it ought never to have appeared), so 

 as to make it almost incompatible with plain historical truth ; 

 and, I believe, in such a form as to have misled the Council of 

 the Palaeontographical Society. Be this as it may, a plain state- 

 ment of facts would, in 1851, have had no sting, and would 

 never have provoked a reply. But why is the charge against 

 Cambridge taken out of its true historical place, and brought 

 forward in another ? For no purpose, which I can comprehend, 

 except that of affording a vehicle for a very unjust insinuation 

 against the character of one of the most honourable and de- 

 voted of the sons of natural science. Such insinuations ought 

 never, under any circumstances, to distigui'e the Transactions 

 of a public Society. It is most true that public Transactions 

 are not to be the vehicles of short-lived controversy, and the 

 Council (as I now think) did right in rejecting my application 

 to them. Their proper office is to be the great recipients of the 

 stream of truth, — j)ure, sincere, and strained from every par- 

 ticle of malignity. In one single unhappy page they have over- 

 stepped the duties of their high and honourable ofl&ce. 



The Cambridge Geological Museum is the property of the Uni- 

 versity ; and there is not a specimen in it which I call my own. 

 Though I have collected largely during thirty-five years, and at 

 the cost of thousands, I have collected for the public ; and the 

 public has a true interest in the administration of the Museum*. 

 What, then, is the nature of its administration ? It is under a 

 board of Auditors, who are governed by laws given in the 

 founder's will. The Professor does not receive the keys of the 

 Museum till he has signed a vexy heavy bond, which he would 

 forfeit to the University on any culpable neglect of duty. Two 



* For a more full account of the contents of the Museum, and of the 

 gradual formation of its very extensive collections, both British and Fo- 

 reign, the reader is referred to the " blue book " of the Royal University 

 Commission, pubhshed by authority in 1852. 



