286 PROFESSOR OWEN ch. ix. 



■ Lady E. has an almost professional extent and 

 power of voice, chiefly exercised in the songs of 

 the last Italian school. The young ladies sing 

 duets and national songs. No violoncello could 

 be found in the whole coztnty of Feri7tanagh ; so I 

 transposed the accompaniments of two German 

 duets (voice and violoncello) for the flute, and they 

 have gone off very well.' 



Before the meeting of the British Association, 

 which was held this year at Southampton, Sir 

 Roderick Murchison, who was to be President, 

 wrote a letter to Owen, in which reference is 

 made to a quadruped known as the ' fossil fox,' 

 the complete skeleton of which Murchison found 

 in the previous year in the great tertiary deposits 

 of Oeningen in Switzerland. 



' . . . The so-called " Molasse" is as great an 

 opprobricism in geology as "Grauwacke" was 

 before I split it up and decimated it. 



' If the fox really approaches very near to the 

 existing Vulpes, that evidence, as well as the forms 

 of the leaves, insects, and fishes, would seem to 

 make the deposit younger than Miocene properly 

 so-called. . . . 



'P.S. — In my discourse at Southampton I 

 intend to dwell as much as possible (seeing that all 

 former Presidents have without exception blinked 

 it) on the Natural History proper discussed by the 

 Association, and in this estimate the researches 



