His Beginning* 



15 



annoyed, and pours scathing scorn on the sugges- 

 tion that Murchison had ever at any time said 

 anything about payment in his letters to him. 

 Then he closes his sardonic comments on the 

 proud note that his own outlay on the two batches 

 of fossils he sent to London was fourteen sterling 

 pounds. 



Murchison and the other London experts, who 

 later on fell foul of Brown, may have had reasons 

 for their failure to understand and to offer real 

 encouragement to this mysterious and somewhat 

 exacting man. How were they, at that distance, 

 to know that they were not dealing with an 

 ordinary collector, who, if he did not stipulate 

 for immediate payment, could not expect poor 

 scientists to run after him with money? After 

 all there were many enthusiastic amateurs about, 

 who were flattered at having their nests despoiled, 

 so long as it was a big enough scientific cuckoo 

 that dispossessed them ! Could Londoners really 

 have been expected then to know that they were 

 dealing with a one-man University in South 

 Africa, which considered that it was entitled to 

 a few books for its embryo library, and more 

 especially any book or pamphlet that dealt with 

 discoveries which had been made within its own 

 walls? Could anyone at all at that time have 

 guessed that a miniature British Museum was 



