Some letters to his friend Dr. W.K. Parker, show the good-fellowship which existed between them, as well as the interest he took in the style and success of Parker's work. (A man of whom he wrote (preface to Professor Jeffery Parker's "Life of W.K. Parker" 1893), that "in him the genius of an artist struggled with that of a philosopher, and not unfrequently the latter got the worst of the contest." He speaks too of his "minute accuracy in observation and boundless memory for details and imagination which absolutely rioted in the scenting out of subtle and often far-fetched analogies.") Parker was hard at work on Birds, a subject in which his friend and leader also was deeply interested, and was indeed preparing an important book upon it.
Referring to his candidature for the Royal Society, he writes on February 21, 1865:] "With reference to your candidature, I am ready to bring your name forward whenever you like, and to back you with 'all my might, power, amity, and authority,' as Essex did Bacon (you need not serve me as Bacon did Essex afterwards), but my impression has been that you did not wish to come forward this year."
[And on November 2, 1866, congratulating him on his] "well-earned honour" [of the F.R.S.]—"Go on and prosper. These are not the things wise men work for; but it is not the less proper of a wise man to take them when they come unsought."
26 Abbey Place, December 3, 1865.
My dear Parker,
I have been so terribly pressed by my work that I have only just been able to finish the reading of your paper.
Very few pieces of work which have fallen in my way come near your account of the Struthious skull in point of clearness and completeness. It is a most admirable essay, and will make an epoch in this kind of inquiry.
I want you, however, to remodel the introduction, and to make some unessential but convenient difference in the arrangement of some of the figures.
Secondly, full as the appendix is of most valuable and interesting matter, I advise you for the present to keep it back.
My reason is that you have done justice neither to yourself nor to your topics, and that if the appendix is printed as it stands, your labour will be in great measure lost.