Mr. H. O. Forbes's Discoveries in the Chatham Islands

Abstract

UNWILLING as I am to interpose in the discussion between Mr. Wallace and Mr. Forbes (supra pp. 27, 74), yet each of those gentlemen having referred to opinions formerly expressed by my brother and myself, it seems fitting that I should offer a few words on the present occasion, if it were only to avoid misapprehension; but I would premise that I have not seen Mr. Forbes's paper read before the Geographical Society or his article in the Fortnightly Review. To this I would add that I am no more ashamed of opinions in the utterance of which before the Royal Society in 1868 I took a share, than I am of having then been a quarter of a century younger than I am now. Whether they are to be considered modified by what I published some halfdozen years later, when I next touched upon the subject, I do not greatly care, and leave to the judgment of those (if any there be) who may take the trouble of comparing the passage in the Philosophical Transactions (1869, pp. 357, 358) with that in the “Encyclopædia Britannica” (ed. 9, iii. p. 760); and what I now think, or at least thought some eighteen months ago, when the last thing I wrote on the question was passed for press, will I hope be before the public in October.