It is a curious thing that of the four applications to Government to be made by the Association, two were for Naval Assistant-Surgeons, namely one for Dr. Hooker, who had just returned from the Himalaya Mountains, and one for me. How I envied Hooker; he has long been engaged to a daughter of Professor Henslow's, and at this very meeting he sat by her side. He is going to be married in a day or two. His father is director of the Kew Gardens, and there is little doubt of his succeeding him. Whether the Government accede to the demand that will be made upon them or not, I can now rest satisfied that no means of influencing them has been left unused by me. If they will not listen to the conjoint recommendations of the Royal Society and the British Association, they will listen to nothing... July 16, 1851. I went yesterday to dine with Colonel Sabine. We had a long discourse about the prospects and probable means of existence of young men trying to make their way to an existence in the scientific world. I took, as indeed what I have seen has forced me to take, rather the despairing side of the question, and said that as it seemed to me England did not afford even the means of existence to young men who were willing to devote themselves to science. However, he spoke cheeringly, and advised me by no means to be hasty, but to wait, and he doubted not that I should succeed. He cited his own case as an instance of waiting, eventually successful. Altogether I felt the better for what he said... There has been a notice of me in the "Literary Gazette" for last week, much more laudatory than I deserve, from the pen of my friend Forbes. [An appreciation of his papers on the Physophoridae and Sagitta, speaking highly both of his observations and philosophic power, in the report of the proceedings in Section D.]