136 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. VII 



Owen's superintendence. The heart-burnings and 

 jealousies about this matter are beyond all conception. 

 Owen is both feared and hated, and it is predicted that if 

 Gray and he come to be officers of the same institution, 

 in a year or two the total result will be a caudal vertebra 

 of each remaining after the manner of the Kilkenny 

 cats. 



However, I heard yesterday, upon what professed to 

 be very good authority, that Owen would not leave the 

 College under any circumstances. 



It is astonishing with what an intense feeling of hatred 

 Owen is regarded by the majority of his contemporaries, 

 with Mantell as arch-hater. The truth is, he is the 

 superior of most, and does not conceal that he knows it, 

 and it must be confessed that he does some very ill- 

 natured tricks now and then. A striking specimen of 

 one is to be found in his article on Lyell in the last 

 Quarterly, where he pillories poor Quekett a most 

 inoffensive man and his own immediate subordinate 

 in a manner not more remarkable for its severity than 

 for its bad taste. 1 That review has done him much harm 

 in the estimation of thinking men and curiously enough, 

 since it was written, reptiles have been found in the old 

 red sandstone, and insectivorous mammals in the Trias ! 

 Owen is an able man, but to my mind not so great as he 

 thinks himself. He can only work in the concrete from 

 bone to bone, in abstract reasoning he becomes lost 

 witness " Parthenogenesis " which he told me he con- 

 sidered one of the best things he had done ! 



He has, however, been very civil to me, and I am as 

 grateful as it is possible to be towards a man with whom 

 I feel it necessary to be always on my guard. 



Quite another being is the other leader of Zoological 

 Science in this country I mean Edward Forbes, 

 Paleontologist to the Geological Survey. More especially 



1 Cp. p. 242, note ad Jin. 



