not I think have been difficult. Most assuredly I should have communicated the M.S. to you before pronouncing the address had it ever entered my mind that there was or could be imagined to be cause for dissatisfaction. In all my courses of lectures in the cities & towns as well as in college, I was and am still your warm defender ^ as regards these discoveries, but my voice was no longer necessary as your claims & the genuineness of the discovery have been long admitted. I was however, I suppose, the first public teacher who espoused them before the world & this I did at once & without waiting for the opinion of any one, and I have ever held you up both in College & out as one of our brightest lights. D^r Deane has written me lately of some new discoveries and I have advised him to communicate them to you as a friendly overture towards recovering a good understanding & I hope you will overlook human infirmity & forget what is passed. I believe you will stand & do stand right, on this subject with the scientific world.

One thing I should explain to you. The letter of your own writing which I sent to you, I found while searching for D^r Deane’s lost MS which he was confident he had communicated to me. As your letter afforded proof that there had been such a communication, I merely cited the fact & nothing more in letters to Dr. Deane, & that you had requested me to delay its publication, a request which I thought reasonable and actually complied with & I presume I so informed D^r Deane as it would have never entered my mind that he would be dissatisfied either then or afterward so. Are you willing to give a synopsis of M^r Owen’s late paper on the Dinornis? I know of no person who would do it so well and I think it would come with peculiar propriety from you, with