i35i SCIENCE HIS VOCATION nn 



To W. Macleay, of Sydney 



41 North Bank, Regent's Park, Nov. 9, 1851. 

 My dear Sir — It is a year to-day since the old Rattlesnake 

 was paid off, and that reminds me among other things that I 

 have hardly kept my promise of giving you information now 

 and then upon the state of matters scientific in England. My 

 last letter is, I am afraid, nine or ten months old, but here in 

 England the fighting and scratching to keep your place in the 

 crowd exclude almost all other thoughts. When I last wrote I 

 was but at the edge of the crush at the pit-door of this great 

 fools' theatre — now I have worked my way into it and through 

 it, and am, I hop?, not far from the check-takers. I have learnt 

 a good deal in my passage. 



[Follows an account of his efiforts to get his papers 

 published — substantially a repetition of what has already 

 been given.] 



Rumours there are scattered abroad of a favourable cast, 

 and I am told on all hands that something will certainly be done. 

 I only asked for £300, something less than the cost of a parlia- 

 mentary blue-book which nobody ever hears of. They take care 

 to obliterate any spark of gratitude that might perchance arise 

 for what they do, by keeping one so long in suspense that the 

 result becomes almost a matter of indifference. Had I known 

 they would keep me so long, I would have published my work 

 as a series of papers in the Philosophical Transactions. 



In the meanwhile I have not been idle, as I hope to show you 

 by the various papers enclosed with this. You will recollect that 

 on the Salpae. No one here knew anything about them, and I 

 thought that all my results were absolutely new — until, me 

 miserum! I found them in a little paper of Krohn's in the 

 Annates des Sciences for 1846, without any figures to draw 

 anybody's attention. 



The memoir on the Medusae (which I sent to you) has, I 

 hear, just escaped a high honour — to wit, the Royal Medal. The 

 award has been made to Newport for his paper on " Impregna- 

 tion." I had no idea that anything I had done was likely to 

 have the slightest claim to such distinction, but I was informed 

 yesterday by one of the Council that the balance hung pretty 

 evenly, and was only decided by their thinking my memoir was 

 too small and short. 



