The University of London

Abstract

MY friend, Mr. Thiselton Dyer, invites me, by his references to what I have written on this subject, to a discussion in your columns. I am very unwilling to accept the invitation, because I have already and often stated my views, and because I see by the length of Mr. Dyer's letter that I may be led into an interminable labyrinth of side-issues. The official report in which are published the minutes of the evidence given before the Royal Commission which sat on this subject in the year 1888, contains a more lengthy discussion of the subject by myself and others than it is possible to carry through in the columns of NATURE; and I could wish that for once those interested in a subject would rescue from proverbial oblivion the pages of careful statement entombed in a Blue-book. Since, however, my friend trails his coat, it would be doing violence to my old-established regard for him to refuse to tread on it—just a little.