Note D — INTRODUCTORY SKETCH, &c.

In this Report, though I have never before referred to it, and do so now with reluctance, I have always felt that the Author did me some injustice. The only reference made to my labours, published the preceding year only, is in the following words: "Many persons have regarded these phenomena (viz., Earthquakes) as due in a great measure to vibrations ... and the subject has lately been brought under our notice, in a Memoir by Mr. Mallet, 'On the Dynamics of Earthquakes,' in which he has treated it in a more determinate manner, and in more detail, than any preceding writer" (p. 74). If that Paper of mine be collated with this Report, it will be, I believe, found that, as respects the earthquake part, the latter tint parades, in a mathematical dress, some portions of the general theory of earthquake movements, previously published by me as above stated. So, also, in the chapter (p. 90) referring to Seismometry, and the important uses to Geology that might be (and since have been, to some extent) made of it, no mention is made of those instruments previously proposed by me, nor of my anticipation of their important uses. This is but too mortifyingly suggestive of the—

"Pereant qui mea ante mihi dixerunt."

Having left this unnoticed for so many years, and during which the Author has preceded me to that bourne where our errors to each other must be forgotten, I should certainly not have now trespassed on the good rule, De mortuis nil nisi bonum, had I not observed very recently one amongst other results probably attributable to it. In Professor Phillips's "Vesuvius," if any one will refer to the passage beginning "The mechanism of earthquake movement has been investigated by competent hands. The late eminent mathematician, Mr. Hopkins, explained these tremors in the solid earth by the general theory of vibratory motion," etc. (pages 257-259)—I think he must, in the absence of collateral information, conclude that, not I, but Mr. Hopkins, was the discoverer of the Theory of Earthquakes as explained by the general theory of vibratory motion.

Probably my friend, Professor Phillips, had not recently referred to those Memoirs and Reports of twenty-four years back, and I am thoroughly convinced that, if he has here perpetuated an injustice, he has done so unintentionally and unwittingly.

Still, the facts show how true it is that

"The ill men do lives after them, The good they do is oft interred with their bones."

And I may venture to ask my friend, should his admirable book reach, as I doubt not it will, another edition, to modify the passage.