This paper explores the competition over the succession to Robert Jameson's natural history chair at the University of Edinburgh in 185455. Usually the particulars of such contests prove elusive to the historian, since rhetoric often obscures the reasons for the victor's success; similarly, the vanquished are unlikely to dwell on these less than glorious episodes in their lives. In this case, a special view of the contest is revealed in an extensive correspondence between Charles Lyell and his protégé, the young Canadian naturalist John William Dawson. Probably because Dawson was so far removed from the complicated political and religious dynamics of mid-nineteenth-century Edinburgh, Lyell presented a frank, richly detailed appraisal of the other competitors and their chances. I have used the metaphor of a horse race, as it seems appropriate both to the event and to the cultural milieu.
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