386 Mr. Couthouy’s Reply to Mr. Dana. 
sage therein, which by any construction can be made to imply 
that I considered 76° Fahrenheit as the limiting temperature of 
corals. Unless he can do this, I maintain his affirmation that I 
named 76° by mistake for 70°, ~ limit named by him, to be 
wholly unfounded. 
There can be no excuse or palliation offered for the conduct of 
Mr. Dana on this point. He was bound in honor, and by every 
principle of justice, to possess himself fully of my real opinions, 
before bringing against me an accusation of so serious import as 
that contained in the record. It matters not whence my views 
were derived, I had a right to claim at his hands a fair presenta- 
tion of them to the public. It was especially incumbent on Mr. 
Dana while accusing me of behavior the most dishonorable, not 
to show any thing like an approach to unfairness himself: how 
much more then, to avoid attributing to me in support of his 
charges, in an imaginary statement, opinions which 1 have never 
expressed. 
The records of the Association were upon the table before him 
at the time his remarks were offered; he had but to open them 
and ascertain that I had made no such statement as he alluded to. 
My published views were within his reach. A slight examina- 
tion would have sufficed to convince him that I had never ad- 
vanced those he attributed to me, and accused me of borrowing 
from his MSS. Between the time of his making the charge 
against me before the Association, and that of its publication in 
your Journal, nearly if not quite three months elapsed, and yet 
he made no attempt to correct his misrepresentations. How far 
these will strengthen belief in, or cast discredit upon the similar 
charge against me in the article first alluded to in this reply, it is 
not my province to determine. 
A few words as to the mere fact of Mr. Dana’s having shown 
me his MSS. at Oahu, in 1840. Although I have not the slight- 
est recollection of the fact, 1 am perfectly willing to concede that 
it is very possible he did so. 
That he exhibited his portfolio of drawings I distinctly re- 
member, and how much I was struck in a cursory examination 
of them, with their wonderful beauty of coloring and minute- 
ness of detail. During the few days we passed in company, we 
were both very much occupied by other matters, and what con- 
Versation or comparison of observations took place between us, 
