His Beginnings 



13 



The latter, and many more afterwards, were sent 

 over by a young man named Alfred Brown, who 

 had a curious history. A Quaker gentleman came 

 across him when employed in cleaning tools in 

 Cirencester College, found that he was a good 

 Greek and Latin scholar, and got him a tutorship 

 in a clergyman's family at the Cape. He after- 

 wards entered the postal service, and being 

 inspired with a vivid interest in geology, spent 

 all the leave he could obtain from his office on 

 the Orange River in getting fossils from the 

 Stormberg Rocks. These, as often as he could 

 afford to send such weighty packages, he sent to 

 Sir R. Murchison, to whom he had received a 

 letter of introduction from his official superior. 

 Sir Roderick, writing to Huxley, says * that he 

 was proud of his new recruit,' to whom he sent 

 not only words of encouragement, but the no 

 less welcome news that the brother of his 

 * discoverer,' hearing of the facts from Professor 

 Woodward, offered to defray his expenses, so 

 that he could collect regularly." 



Brown alludes to this quotation in his Journal, 

 but he says nothing about the truth or otherwise 

 of the statement that he saw the inside of a College 

 as a laboratory assistant, a humble but honourable 

 vantage point from which, if the above be true, 

 he would not be the first to have risen to greater 



c 



