I am taking double
specimens now, so that if one part is lost, I can send another. The
great difficulty is transmission. I sent a dissertation on the decrease
of water in Africa. Call on Professor Owen and ask if he wants anything
in the four jars I still possess, of either rhinoceros, camelopard,
etc., etc. If he wants these, or anything else these jars will hold, he
must send me more jars and spirits of wine."
He afterward heard of the fate of one of the boxes of specimens he had
sent home--that which contained the fossils of Bootchap. It was lost on
the railway after reaching England, in custody of a friend. "The thief
thought the box contained bullion, no doubt. You may think of one of the
faces in _Punch_ as that of the scoundrel, when he found in the box a
lot of 'chuckystanes.'" He had got many nocturnal-feeding, animals, but
the heat made it very difficult to preserve them. Many valuable seeds he
had sent to Calcutta, with the nuts of the desert, but had heard nothing
of them. He had lately got knowledge of a root to which the same virtues
were attached as to ergot of rye.
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