1851 SCIENCE HIS VOCATION 135 



of all this ? whether it leads anywhere in the direction 

 of bread and cheese ? To this also I can give a tolerably 

 satisfactory answer. 



As you won't have a Professor of Natural History at 

 Sydney to my great 'sorrow I have gone in as a 

 candidate for a Professorial chair at the other end of the 

 world, Toronto in Canada. In England there is nothing 

 to be done it is the most hopeless prospect I know of ; 

 of course the Service offers nothing for me except irre- 

 trievable waste of time, and the scientific appointments 

 are so few and so poor that they are not tempting. . . . 



Had the Sydney University been carried out as 

 originally proposed, I should certainly have become a 

 candidate for the Natural History Chair. I know no 

 finer field for exertion for any naturalist than Sydney 

 Harbour itself. Should such a Professorship be hereafter 

 established, I trust you will jog the memory of my 

 Australian friends in my behalf. I have finally decided 

 that my vocation is science, and I have made up my mind 

 to the comparative poverty which is its necessary adjunct, 

 and to the no less certain seclusion from the ordinary 

 pleasures and rewards of men. I say this without the 

 slightest idea that there is anything to be enthusiastic 

 about in either science or its professors. A year behind 

 the scenes is quite enough to disabuse one of all rose-pink 

 illusions. 



But it is equally clear to me that for a man of my 

 temperament, at any rate, the sole secret of getting 

 through this life with anything like contentment is to 

 have full scope for the development of one's faculties. 

 Science alone seems to me to afford this scope Law, 

 Divinity, Physic, and Politics being in a state of chaotic 

 vibration between utter humbug and utter scepticism. 



There is a great stir in the scientific world at present 

 about who is to occupy Konig's place at the British 

 Museum, and whether the whole establishment had better 

 not, quoad Zoology, be remodelled and placed under 





