1853 SCIENTIFIC RESULTS OF THE VOYAGE 107 



sine die." Parliament breaking up immediately after 

 gave the officials a good excuse for doing nothing 

 more. 



When his year's leave expired in June 1853, he 

 wrote the following letter to Sir William Burnett : 



As the period of my leave of absence from H.M.S. 

 Fisguard is about to expire, I have the honour to report 

 that the duty on which I have been engaged has been, 

 carried out, as far as my means permit, by the publication 

 of a " Memoir upon the Homologies of the Cephalous 

 Mollusca," with four plates, which appeared in the Philo- 

 sophical Transactions for 1852 (published 1853), being 

 the fourth memoir resulting from the observations made 

 during the voyage of H.M.S. Rattlesnake which has ap- 

 peared in these Transactions. 



I have the pleasure of being able to add that the 

 President and Council of the Koyal Society have considered 

 these memoirs worthy of being rewarded by the Royal 

 Medal in Physiology for 1852, which they did me the 

 honour to confer in the November of that year. 



I regret that no definite answer of any kind having as 

 yet been given to the strong representations which were 

 made by the Presidents both of the Royal Society and of 

 the British Association in 1852 to H.M. Government 

 representations which have recently been earnestly 

 repeated in order to obtain a grant for the purpose of 

 publishing the remainder of these researches in a separate 

 form, I have been unable to proceed any further, and I 

 beg to request a renewal of my leave of absence from 

 H.M.S. Fisguard, so that if H.M. Government think fit to 

 give the grant applied for, it may be in my power to 

 make use of it ; or that, should it be denied, I may be 

 enabled to find some other means of preventing the total 

 loss of the labour of some years. 



Hereupon he was allowed six months longer, but 



