386 On Statements reflecting on the University of Cambridge. 



Prof. Forbes that were so obliging as to ask M. S. to lend me 

 the Cambridge specimens ; at the same time that you presented 

 a similar demand on behalf of the Palseontographical Society to 

 Messrs. Fletcher, Battersby, the British Museum, Geological 

 Society, &c. &c.^' The liberal supply that we received from 

 other sources, if I recollect correctly, rendered an application to 

 the British Museum unnecessary. In every other respect the 

 recollection of Prof. M. -Edwards regarding the application to 

 Prof. Sedgwick for Mountain Limestone and Silurian corals, is 

 in perfect accordance with my own. 



I cannot account for the impression made on Prof. Sedgwick^s 

 mind, that the Palaeozoic corals were not intended to be published 

 by Prof. M. -Edwards and M. Jules Haime, as in the Report 

 made to the Annual Meeting, held on the 23rd of March, 1850, 

 and subsequently printed and distributed to the Members, the 

 following passage occurs : — " The Council have also the pleasure 

 to announce, that the first work for 1850, Part I. of Prof. Milne- 

 Edwards's Monograph of the ' Fossil Corals of Great Britain,' 

 containing twelve plates, is in the binder's hands, and will be 

 delivered with the works for 1848 and 1849.'' The title of the 

 work thus advertised before the issue of the first part distinctly 

 embraces the whole of the fossil corals. In the Report of the 

 following year, the work is again designated by the same com- 

 prehensive title. Nor is there any discrepancy in the statement 

 made by Prof. M. -Edwards to Prof. M'Coy, quoted in his letter, 

 p. 287, Ann. and Mag. Nat. Hist. April 1854, who writes, " They 

 were highly complimentary on all the work that had been done, 

 and stated that they were about preparing a monograph on the 

 Tertiary, and subsequently one on the Oolitic corals for the 

 Palseontographical Society, but had no immediate intention of 

 touching the Palseozoic corals." Had the word immediate been 

 left out, I could have perfectly comprehended the misapprehen- 

 sion that appears to have arisen in Prof. McCoy's mind regarding 

 the limitation of the work ; but the introduction of that word 

 appears to me distinctly to imply that the Palaeozoic corals were 

 not excluded, but simply deferred until their turn for publication 

 should arrive. 



Of the two modes of application, I am more surprised that 

 the written one should have been so completely forgotten until 

 recalled by Prof. M'Coy's extract from Prof. Sedgwick's letter 

 to him ; while the personal one, made a very short time pre- 

 viously to a public meeting in which the learned Professor took 

 a deep interest, and at which he delivered one of those eloquent 

 and brilliant addresses which it is his habit to pour forth on such 

 occasions, may naturally be supposed, under the excitement of 

 the period, to have been totally obliterated by passing events. 



