refiecting on tlie University of Cambridge. 287 



I have any fears of this kind ; but no man of honourable feeling 

 wishes to owe his safety to the forbearance of his friends. 



Spite of the regulations here alluded to, I have several times 

 (as Professor Owen, Mr. Searles Wood, Mr. Sowerby, and Mr. 

 Davidson and others could witness) conveyed, for a few days, 

 very rare specimens away from our Museum to serve some scien- 

 tific purpose. I did so in each instance meo periculo, and with- 

 out consulting the authorities, as I thought the occasions might 

 perhaps justify the irregularity and the risk. My honoured 

 friend, the late Professor De Blainville, strongly urged me to 

 send him, for examination, a very valuable specimen from the 

 old Woodwardian cabinets, which had once formed a part of the 

 ancient collection of Agostino Scilla. I could not comply with 

 his request j but I ventured to place the specimen in the custody 

 of Professor Owen, that good drawings and casts might be made 

 of it for M. de Blainville's use. 



After the gi*eat laboui', continued for more than thirty years, 

 in the formation of our collection, the cost bestowed on its ar- 

 rangement, the perfect liberality of its administration, and the 

 noble descriptive and scientific catalogue of our whole Palseozoic 

 series by M'Coy, I little expected to hear a whisper of censure 

 against us on the score of our Museum ; nor should I have cared 

 one straw for any implied censure in the passage on which I 

 have been led to comment, had it not been followed by a very 

 unjust insinuation against my friend; and I now request the 

 reader's attention to his letter of explanation and defence. 



Professor M'Coy's Letter. 



Belfast, 26th December, 1853. 

 My dear Sir, 

 In reply to your letter, relative to the observations published 

 by MM. Milne-Edwards and Haime in p. 151 of the Third part 

 of their Memoir on Fossil Corals, for the Palaeontographical 

 Society, reflecting unjustly on the liberality of the Cambridge 

 Museum, and on myself, I beg to state that I published preli- 

 minary descriptions of the new Carboniferous and Oolitic corals 

 in the collection, in the Annals of Natural History for 1849, 

 and that some considerable time after their publication MM. 

 Edwards and Haime came to Cambridge to see them. I was 

 fortunately there, and spent several hours in demonstrating all 

 my species to them ; I also showed them the drawings on stone 

 making for our plates. They were highly complimentary on all 

 the work that had been done, and stated that they were about 

 ])repariug a Monograph on Tertiary, and subsequently ©ne on 



