1851 POSITION IN THE WORLD OF SCIENCE 99 



months were spent at sea, and therefore may be considered 

 as so much lost ; and six months I have had in England. 

 That, I may say, has not been thrown away altogether 

 without fruit. I have read a good deal and I have 

 written a good deal. I have made some valuable friends, 

 and have found my work more highly estimated than 

 I had ventured to hope. I must tell you something, 

 because it will please you, even if you think me vain 

 for doing so. 



I was talking to Professor Owen yesterday, and said 

 that I imagined I had to thank him in great measure for 

 the honour of the F.R.S. " No," he said, " you have 

 nothing to thank but the goodness of your- own work." 

 For about ten minutes I felt rather proud of that speech, 

 and shall keep it by me whenever I feel inclined to think 

 myself a fool, and that I have a most mistaken notion of 

 my own capacities. The only use of honours is as an 

 antidote to such fits of the " blue devils." Of one thing, 

 however, which is by no means so agreeable, my oppor- 

 tunities for seeing the scientific world in England force 

 upon me every day a stronger and stronger conviction. 

 It is that there is no chance of living by science. I have 

 been loth to believe it, but it is so. There are not more 

 than four or five offices in London which a Zoologist or 

 Comparative Anatomist can hold and live by. Owen, 

 who has a European reputation, second only to that of 

 Cuvier, gets as Hunterian Professor 300 a year ! which 

 is less than the salary of many a bank clerk. My friend 

 Forbes, who is a highly distinguished and a very able 

 man, gets the same from his office of Palaeontologist to 

 the Geological Survey of Great Britain. Now, these are 

 first-rate men men who have been at work for years 

 laboriously toiling upward men whose abilities, had they 

 turned them into the many channels of money-making, 

 must have made large fortunes. But the beauty of 

 Nature and the pursuit of Truth allured them into a 

 nobler life and this is the result. . . In literature a 



