about 700 persons. Our President, Lord Prudhoe, was in the chair,
and greatly desirous of knowing the age of the wheat. You know he
is learned in Egyptian matters, and was anxious about the label or
inscription accompanying the corn. I hope I have not done wrong,
but I rather fear your letter will be published, or at least the
wheat part, for a gentleman asked me whether he might copy it, and
I instantly gave him leave, but found that he was connected with
the press, the _Literary Gazette_. I hope you will not object since
without thought on my part the matter has gone thus far. The news
is so good and valuable that I do not wonder at the desire to have
it,--Ever your obliged servant,

"M. Faraday.

"M.F. Tupper, Esq.,
&c. &c. &c.

"_P.S._--I am happy to say that I am plain Mr. Faraday, and if I
have my wish shall keep so.--M.F."

An early volume of my so-called "Critica Egotistica" has many letters
and printed communications on this subject: but as not being a
recognised agriculturist myself, I did not wish it called by my
name,--so it is only known in the markets (chiefly I have heard in
Essex) as "Mummy Wheat." Talking of declined honours in nomenclature, I
may here mention that a new beetle, found by Vernon Wollaston and urged
by him to be named after the utterly "unsharded" me (who had however
gratified that distinguished entomologist by my poem on Beetles) was
respectfully refused the prefix of my name, as scarcely knowing a
lepidopt from a coleopt. _Ne sutor ultra crepidam._ If honour is to be
given, let it be deserved.

CHAPTER XXV.

HONOURS--INVENTIONS.

Authorship reaps honour in these latter days quite as much as it did in
the classic times of Augustus with Virgil and Horace for his intimates,
and of Petrarch crowned at the Capitol laureate of all Italy during the
vacancy of a popedom in the Vatican. Not but that, with or without any
titular distinction, authorship is practically the most noticeable rank
amongst us. Many will pass by a duke who would have stopped and waited
to have looked at a Darwin when he was in this lower sphere; and I am
quite sure that the grand presence of Alfred Tennyson would attract more
affectionate homage than that of any other ennobled magnate in the land.
As to his title, I was glad that his good taste and wisdom elected to be
calle