What have I done with my twenty-sixth year? Six months were spent at sea, and therefore may be considered as so much lost; and six months I have had in England. That, I may say, has not been thrown away altogether without fruit. I have read a good deal and I have written a good deal. I have made some valuable friends, and have found my work more highly estimated than I had ventured to hope. I must tell you something, because it will please you, even if you think me vain for doing so. I was talking to Professor Owen yesterday, and said that I imagined I had to thank him in great measure for the honour of the F.R.S. "No," he said, "you have nothing to thank but the goodness of your own work." For about ten minutes I felt rather proud of that speech, and shall keep it by me whenever I feel inclined to think myself a fool, and that I have a most mistaken notion of my own capacities. The only use of honours is as an antidote to such fits of the "blue devils." Of one thing, however, which is by no means so agreeable, my opportunities for seeing the scientific world in England force upon me every day a stronger and stronger conviction. It is that there is no chance of living by science. I have been loth to believe it, but it is so. There are not more than four or five offices in London which a Zoologist or Comparative Anatomist can hold and live by. Owen, who has a European reputation, second only to that of Cuvier, gets as Hunterian Professor 300 pounds sterling a year! which is less than the salary of many a bank clerk. My friend Forbes, who is a highly distinguished and a very able man, gets the same from his office of Paleontologist to the Geological Survey of Great Britain. Now, these are first-rate men--men who have been at work for years laboriously toiling upward--men whose abilities, had they turned them into the many channels of money-making, must have made large fortunes. But the beauty of Nature and the pursuit of Truth allured them into a nobler life--and this is the result...In literature a man may write for magazines and reviews, and so support himself; but not so in science. I could get anything I write into any of the journals or any of the Transactions, but I know no means of thereby earning five shillings. A man who chooses a life of science chooses not a life of poverty, but, so far as I can see, a life of NOTHING, and the art of living upon nothing at all has yet to be discovered. You will naturally think, then, "Why persevere in so hopeless a course?" At present I cannot help myself. For my own credit, for the sake of gratifying those who have hitherto helped me on--nay, for the sake of truth and science itself, I must work out fairly and fully complete what I have begun. And when that is done, I will courageously and cheerfully turn my back upon all my old aspirations. The world is wide, and there is everywhere room for honesty of purpose and earnest endeavour. Had I failed in attaining my wishes