274 



LAST YEARS IN ENGLAND. [Char VI. 



The largest room was rilled with the collective science and 

 fashion of the Association ; hung round with great pictures of 

 the Nile Sources, etc., for Captain Speke's previous paper. Sir 

 R. I. Murchison presided, though he wanted to be off else- 

 where. The grey-headed grandees crowded the platform. I 

 stood on a form where I could see the audience. They were 

 not only quiet. and interested, but showed respectful attention • 

 evidently thinking that a man who could plan and carry out 

 such a mission, his official friends thinking he was sure to be 

 killed, was worth honouring. He left his notes, and spoke — 

 quietly, modestly, but with confidence. At the end, Murchison 

 said that whether he was an African or an American gentle- 

 man, no member of the Association could have made his com- 

 munication in a more becoming manner, nor in better English. 

 *Yet this is the man who, in his native country, is still by law a 

 piece of property, without rights of wife and children, and 

 liable to terrible punishment, if he shows his face in his native 

 city. Moreover, you or I might still be fined and imprisoned, 

 from Maine to De Trica, under the Federal laws, if we helped 

 him on his journey : always supposing his e master ' to be a 

 loyal man ! " 



The following evening, Philip gave a lecture in the Chemical 

 Section-room, on the Permissive Bill, which was well reported ; 

 it obliged him to decline an invitation to dinner from the 

 President of the Association. The following day he spent with 

 Sir W. C. Trevelyan at his seat at Wallington, " to talk over 

 Alliance matters (he being our President, and subscribing £200 

 to ^300 a year, sometimes more *), and also to see one of 

 the best of the old collections of shells, of the date of Wood's 

 Supplement. I wanted to see what West Coast shells were 

 known in those days, in order to decide some critical questions 

 of synonymy. The public collections being mixed up with 

 modern importations would not give me that particular in- 

 formation. I satisfied my mind on a few knotty points. The 

 shells in question were no doubt collected in Captain Cook's 

 voyage." Philip much admired the fine old mansion, with its 



# In 1877-78 it was ^"1200. He died March 23, 1879, set 82.' 



