Agassiz to Professor Buckland.
. . . I thank you most warmly for the very important information you have so kindly given me respecting the rich collections of England; I will, if possible, make arrangements to visit them this year, and in that case I will beg you to let me have a few letters of recommendation to facilitate my examination of them in detail. Not that I question for a moment the liberality of the English naturalists. All the continental savants who have visited your museums have praised the kindness shown in intrusting to them the rarest objects, and I well know that the English rival other nations in this respect, and even leave them far behind. But one must have merited such favors by scientific labors; to a beginner they are always a free gift, wholly undeserved. . . .A few months later Agassiz received a very gratifying and substantial mark of the interest felt by English naturalists in his work.
Charles Lyell to Louis Agassiz.
Somerset house, London, February 4, 1834.
. . It is with the greatest pleasure that I announce to you good news.
The Geological 