To-day [he writes on April 14] I saw Forbes at the Museum of Practical Geology, where I often drop in on him.  “Well,” he said, “I am glad to be able to tell you you are all right for the Royal Society; the selection was made on Friday night, and I hear that you are one of the selected.  I have not seen the list, but my authority is so good that you may make yourself easy about it.”  I confess to having felt a little proud, though I believe I spoke and looked as cool as a cucumber.  There were thirty-eight candidates, out of whom only fifteen could be selected, and I fear that they have left behind much better men than I. I shall not feel certain about the matter until I receive some official announcement.  I almost wish that until then I had heard nothing about it.  Notwithstanding all my cucumbery appearance, I will confess to you that I could not sit down and read to-day after the news.  I wandered hither and thither restlessly half over London...Whether I have it or not, I can say one thing, that I have left my case to stand on its own strength; I have not asked for a single vote, and there are not on my certificate half the names that there might be.  If it be mine, it is by no intrigue.

[Again, on May 4, 1851]

I am twenty-six to-day...and it reminds me that I have left you now a whole year.  It is perfectly frightful to think how the time is slipping by, and yet seems to bring us no nearer.

What have I done with my twenty-sixth year?  Six months were spent at sea, and therefore may be considered as so much lost; and six months I have had in England.  That, I may say, has not been thrown away altogether without fruit.  I have read a good deal and I have written a good deal.  I have made some valuable friends, and have found my work more highly estimated than I had ventured to hope.  I must tell you something, because it will please you, even if you think me vain for doing so.

I was talking to Professor Owen yesterday, and said that I imagined I had to thank him in great measure for the honour of the F.R.S.  “No,” he said, “you have nothing to thank but the goodness of your own work.”  For about ten minutes I felt rather proud of that speech, and shall keep it by me whenever I feel inclined to think myself a fool, and that I have a most mistaken notion of my own capacities.  The only use of honours is as an antidote to such fits of the “blue devils.”  Of one thing, however, which is by no means so agreeable, my opportunities for seeing the scientific world in England force upon me every day a stronger and stronger conviction.  It is that there is no chance of living by science.  I have been loth to believe it, but it is so.  There are not more than four or five offices in London which a Zoologist or Comparative Anatomist can hold and live by.  Owen, who has a European reputation, second only to that of Cuvier, gets as Hunterian Professor 300 pounds sterling a year! which is less than the salary of many a bank