The higher the state of civilisation, the more completely do the actions of one member of the social body influence all the rest, and the less possible is it for any one man to do a wrong thing without interfering, more or less, with the freedom of all his fellow-citizens. So that, even upon the narrowest view of the functions of the State, it must be admitted to have wider powers than the advocates of the police theory are disposed to admit.

[This leads to a criticism of Mr. Spencer's elaborate comparison of the body politic to the body physical, a comparison vitiated by the fact that "among the higher physiological organisms there is none which is developed by the conjunction of a number of primitively independent existences into a complete whole."]

The process of social organisation appears to be comparable, not so much to the process of organic development, as to the synthesis of the chemist, by which independent elements are gradually built up into complex aggregations—in which each element retains an independent individuality, though held in subordination to the whole.

[It is permissible to quote a few more sentences from this address for the sake of their freshness, or as illustrating the writer's ideas.

Discussing toleration,] "I cannot discover that Locke fathers the pet doctrine of modern Liberalism, that the toleration of error is a good thing in itself, and to be reckoned among the cardinal virtues." [(This bears on his speech against Ultramontanism.)

Of Mr. Spencer's comparison of the State to a living body in the interests of individualism:—]

I suppose it is universally agreed that it would be useless and absurd for the State to attempt to promote friendship and sympathy between man and man directly. But I see no reason why, if it be otherwise expedient, the State may not do something towards that end indirectly. For example, I can conceive the existence of an Established Church which should be a blessing to the community. A Church in which, week by week, services should be devoted, not to the iteration of abstract propositions in theology, but to the setting before men's minds of an ideal of true, just, and pure living; a place in which those who are weary of the burden of daily cares should find a moment's rest in the contemplation of the higher life which is possible for all, though attained by so few; a place in which the man of strife and of business should have time to think how small, after all, are the rewards he covets compared with peace and charity. Depend upon it, if such a Church existed, no one would seek to disestablish it.

The sole order of nobility which, in my judgment, becomes a philosopher, is the rank which he holds in the estimation of his fellow-workers, who are the only competent judges in such matters. Newton and Cuvier lowered themselves when the one accepted an idle knighthood, and the other became a baron of the empire. The great men who went to their graves as Michael Faraday and George Grote seem to me to have understood the dignity of knowledge better when they declined all such meretricious trappings. [(On the other hand, he thought it right and proper for officials, in scientific as in other departments, to accept such honours, as giving them official power and status. In his own case, while refusing all simple titular honours, he accepted the Privy Councillorship, because, though incidentally carrying a title, it was an office; and an office in virtue of which a man of science might, in theory at least, be called upon to act as responsible adviser to the Government, should special occasion arise.)

The usual note of high pressure recurs in the following letter, written to thank Darwin for his new work, "The Descent of Man, and Selection in relation to Sex."]

Jermyn Street, February 20, 1871.

My dear Darwin,

Best thanks for your new book, a copy of which I find awaiting me this morning. But I wish you would not bring your books out when I am so busy with all sorts of things. You know I can't show my face anywhere in society without having read them—and I consider it too bad.

No doubt, too, it is full of suggestions just like that I have hit upon by chance at page 212 of volume 1, which connects the periodicity of vital phenomena with antecedent conditions.

Fancy lunacy, etc., coming out of the primary fact that one's nth ancestor lived between tide-marks! I declare it's the grandest suggestion I have heard of for an age.

I have been working like a horse for the last fortnight, with the fag end of influenza hanging about me—and I am improving under the process, which shows what a good tonic work is.

I shall try if I can't pick out from "Sexual Selection" some practical hint for the improvement of gutter-babies, and bring in a resolution thereupon at the School Board.

Ever yours faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

[This year also saw the inception of a scheme for a series of science primers, under the joint editorship of Professors Huxley, Roscoe, and Balfour Stewart. Huxley undertook the Introductory Primer, but it progressed slowly owing to pressure of other work, and was not actually finished till 1880.]

26 Abbey Place, June 29, 1871.

My dear Roscoe,

If you could see the minutes of the Proceedings of the Aid to Science Commission, the Contagious Diseases Commission and the School Board (to say nothing of a lecture to Schoolmasters every morning), you would forgive me for not having written to you before.

But now that I have had a little time to look at it, I hasten to say that your chemical primer appears to me to be admirable—just what is wanted.

I enclose the sketch for my Primer primus. You will see the bearing of it, rough as it is. When it touches upon chemical matters, it would deal with them in a more rudimentary fashion than yours does, and only prepare the minds of the fledglings for you.

I send you a copy of the Report of the Education Committee, the resolutions based on which I am now slowly getting passed by our Board. The adoption of (c) among the essential subjects has, I hope, secured the future of Elementary Science in London. Cannot you get as much done in Manchester?

Ever yours faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

[Sir Charles Lyell was now nearly 74 years old, and though he lived four years longer, age was beginning to tell even upon his vigorous powers. A chance meeting with him elicited the following letter:—]

26 Abbey Place, July 30, 1871.

My dear Darwin,

I met Lyell in Waterloo Place to-day walking with Carrick Moore—and although what you said the other day had prepared me, I was greatly shocked at his appearance, and still more at his speech. There is no doubt it is affected in the way you describe, and the fact gives me very sad forebodings about him. The Fates send me a swift and speedy end whenever my time comes. I think there is nothing so lamentable as the spectacle of the wreck of a once clear and vigorous mind!

I am glad Frank enjoyed his visit to us. He is a great favourite here, and I hope he will understand that he is free of the house. It was the greatest fun to see Jess and Mady [aged 13 and 12 respectively] on their dignity with him. No more kissing, I can tell you. Miss Mady was especially sublime.

Six out of our seven children have the whooping-cough. Need I say therefore that the wife is enjoying herself?

With best regards to Mrs. Darwin and your daughter (and affectionate love to Polly) believe me,

Ever yours faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

[The purchase of the microscope, already referred to, was the subject of another letter to Dr. Dohrn, of which only the concluding paragraph about the School Board, is of general interest. Unfortunately the English microscope did not turn out a success, as compared to the work of the Jena opticians: this is the "optical Sadowa" of the second letter.]

I fancy from what you wrote to my wife that there has been some report of my doings about the School Board in Germany. So I send you the number of the "Contemporary Review" [Containing his article on "The School Boards," etc.] for December that you may see what line I have really taken. Fanatics on both sides abuse me, so I think I must be right.

When is this infernal war to come to an end? I hold for Germany as always, but I wish she would make peace.

With best wishes for the New Year,

Ever yours,

T.H. Huxley.

26 Abbey Place, July 7, 1871.

My dear Dohrn,

I have received your packet, and I will take care that your Report is duly presented to the Association. But the "Happy Family" in general, and myself in particular, are very sorry you cannot come to Scotland. We had begun to count upon it, and the children are immeasurably disgusted with the Insects which will not lay their eggs at the right time.

You have become acclimatised to my bad behaviour in the matter of correspondence, so I shall not apologise for being in arrear. I have been frightfully hard-worked with two Royal Commissions and the School Board all sitting at once, but I am none the worse, and things are getting into shape—which is a satisfaction for one's trouble. I look forward hopefully towards getting back to my ordinary work next year.

Your penultimate letter was very interesting to me, but the glimpses into your new views which it affords are very tantalising—and I want more. What you say about the development of the Amnion in your last letter still more nearly brought "Donner und Blitz!" to my lips—and I shall look out anxiously for your new facts. Lankester tells me you have been giving lectures on your views. I wish I had been there to hear.

He is helping me as Demonstrator in a course of instruction in Biology which I am giving to Schoolmasters—with the view of converting them into scientific missionaries to convert the Christian Heathen of these islands to the true faith.

I am afraid that the English microscope turned out to be by no means worth the money and trouble you bestowed upon it. But the glory of such an optical Sadowa should count for something! I wish that you would get your Jena man to supply me with one of his best objectives if the price is not ruinous—I should like to compare it with my 1/12 inch of Ross. [In this connection it may be noted that he himself invented a combination microscope for laboratory use, still made by Crouch the optician. (See "Journal of Queckett Micr. Club" volume 5 page 144.)]

All our children but Jessie have the whooping-cough—Pertussis—I don't know your German name for it. It is distressing enough for them, but, I think, still worse for their mother. However, there are no serious symptoms, and I hope the change of air will set them right.

They all join with me in best wishes and regrets that you are not coming. Won't you change your mind? We start on July 31st.

Ever yours faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

[The summer holiday of 1871 was spent at St. Andrews, a place rather laborious of approach at that time, with all the impedimenta of a large and young family, but chosen on account of its nearness to Edinburgh, where the British Association met that year. I well remember the night journey of some ten or eleven hours, the freshness of the early morning at Edinburgh, the hasty excursion with my father up the hill from the station as far as the old High Street. The return journey, however, was made easier by the kindness of Dr. Matthews Duncan, who put up the whole family for a night, so as to break the journey.

We stayed at Castlemount, now belonging to Miss Paton, just opposite the ruined castle. Among other visitors to St. Andrews known to my father were Professors Tait and Crum Brown, who inveigled him into making trial of the "Royal and Ancient" game, which then, as now, was the staple resource of the famous little city. I have a vivid recollection of his being hopelessly bunkered three or four holes from home, and can testify that he bore the moral strain with more than usual calm as compared with the generality of golfers. Indeed, despite his naturally quick temper and his four years of naval service at a time when, perhaps, the traditions of a former generation had not wholly died out, he had a special aversion to the use of expletives; and the occasional appearance of a strong word in his letters must be put down to a simply literary use which he would have studiously avoided in conversation. A curious physical result followed the vigour with which he threw himself into the unwonted recreation. For the last twenty years his only physical exercise had been walking, and now his arms went black and blue under the muscular strain, as if they had been bruised.

But the holiday was by no means spent entirely in recreation. One week was devoted to the British Association; another to the examination of some interesting fossils at Elgin; while the last three weeks were occupied in writing two long articles, "Mr. Darwin's Critics," and the address entitled "Administrative Nihilism" referred to above, as well as a review of Dana's "Crinoids." The former, which appeared in the "Contemporary Review" for November ("Collected Essays" 2 120-187) was a review of (1) "Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection," by A.R. Wallace, (2) "The Genesis of Species," by St. George Mivart, F.R.S., and (3) an article in the "Quarterly" for July 1871, on Darwin's "Descent of Man."]

"I am Darwin's bull-dog," [he once said, and the "Quarterly Reviewer's" treatment of Darwin,] "alike unjust and unbecoming," [provoked him into immediate action.] "I am about sending you," [he writes to Haeckel on November 2,] "a little review of some of Darwin's critics. The dogs have been barking at his heels too much of late." [Apart from this stricture, however, he notes the] "happy change" [which] "has come over Mr. Darwin's critics. The mixture of ignorance and insolence which at first characterised a large proportion of the attacks with which he was assailed, is no longer the sad distinction of anti-Darwinian criticism." [Notes too] "that, in a dozen years, the 'Origin of Species' has worked as complete a revolution in biological science as the 'Principia' did in astronomy—and it has done so, because, in the words of Helmholtz, it contains 'an essentially new creative thought.'"

[The essay is particularly interesting as giving evidence of his skill and knowledge in dealing with psychology, as against the "Quarterly Reviewer," and even with such an unlikely subject as scholastic metaphysics, so that, by an odd turn of events, he appeared in the novel character of a defender of Catholic orthodoxy against an attempt from within that Church to prove that its teachings have in reality always been in harmony with the requirements of modern science. For Mr. Mivart, while twitting the generality of men of science with their ignorance of the real doctrines of his church, gave a reference to the Jesuit theologian Suarez, the latest great representative of scholasticism, as following St. Augustine in asserting, not direct, but derivative creation, that is to say, evolution from primordial matter endued with certain powers. Startled by this statement, Huxley investigated the works of the learned Jesuit, and found not only that Mr. Mivart's reference to the Metaphysical Disputations was not to the point, but that in the "Tractatus de opere sex Dierum," Suarez expressly and emphatically rejects this doctrine and reprehends Augustine for asserting it.]

By great good luck [he writes to Darwin from St. Andrews] there is an excellent library here, with a good copy of Suarez, in a dozen big folios. Among these I dived, to the great astonishment of the librarian, and looking into them as "the careful robin eyes the delver's toil" (vide "Idylls"), I carried off the two venerable clasped volumes which were most promising.

So I have come out in the new character of a defender of Catholic orthodoxy, and upset Mivart out of the mouth of his own prophet.

[Darwin himself was more than pleased with the article, and wrote enthusiastically (see "Life and Letters" 3 148-150). A few of his generous words may be quoted to show the rate at which he valued his friend's championship.

What a wonderful man you are to grapple with those old metaphysical-divinity books...The pendulum is now swinging against our side, but I feel positive it will soon swing the other way; and no mortal man will do half as much as you in giving it a start in the right direction, as you did at the first commencement.

And again, after "mounting climax on climax," he continues:—"I must tell you what Hooker said to me a few years ago. 'When I read Huxley, I feel quite infantile in intellect.'"

This sketch of what constituted his holiday—and it was not very much busier than many another holiday—may possibly suggest what his busy time must have been like.

Till the end of the year the immense amount of work did not apparently tell upon him. He rejoiced in it. In December he remarked to his wife that with all his different irons in the fire, he had never felt his mind clearer or his vigour greater. Within a week he broke down quite suddenly, and could neither work nor think. He refers to this in the following letter:—]

Jermyn Street, December 22, 1871.

My dear Johnny,

You are certainly improving. As a practitioner in the use of cold steel myself, I have read your letter in to-day's "Nature," "mit Ehrfurcht und Bewunderung." And the best evidence of the greatness of your achievement is that it extracts this expression of admiration from a poor devil whose brains and body are in a colloid state, and who is off to Brighton for a day or two this afternoon.

God be with thee, my son, and strengthen the contents of thy gall-bladder!

Ever thine,

T.H. Huxley.

PS.—Seriously, I am glad that at last a protest has been raised against the process of anonymous self-praise to which our friend is given. I spoke to Smith the other day about that dose of it in the "Quarterly" article on Spirit-rapping.

CHAPTER 2.3.

1872.

[Dyspepsia, that most distressing of maladies, had laid firm hold upon him. He was compelled to take entire rest for a time. But his first holiday produced no lasting effect, and in the summer he was again very ill. Then the worry of a troublesome lawsuit in connection with the building of his new house intensified both bodily illness and mental depression. He had great fears of being saddled with heavy costs at the moment when he was least capable of meeting any new expense—hardly able even to afford another much-needed spell of rest. But in his case, as in others, at this critical moment the circle of fellow-workers in science to whom he was bound by ties of friendship, resolved that he should at least not lack the means of recovery. In their name Charles Darwin wrote him the following letter, of which it is difficult to say whether it does more honour to him who sent it or to him who received it:—

Down, Beckenham, Kent, April 23, 1873.

My dear Huxley,

I have been asked by some of your friends (eighteen in number) to inform you that they have placed through Robarts, Lubbock & Company, the sum of 2100 pounds sterling to your account at your bankers. We have done this to enable you to get such complete rest as you may require for the re-establishment of your health; and in doing this we are convinced that we act for the public interest, as well as in accordance with our most earnest desires. Let me assure you that we are all your warm personal friends, and that there is not a stranger or mere acquaintance amongst us. If you could have heard what was said, or could have read what was, as I believe, our inmost thoughts, you would know that we all feel towards you, as we should to an honoured and much loved brother. I am sure that you will return this feeling, and will therefore be glad to give us the opportunity of aiding you in some degree, as this will be a happiness to us to the last day of our lives. Let me add that our plan occurred to several of your friends at nearly the same time and quite independently of one another.

My dear Huxley, your affectionate friend,

Charles Darwin.

It was a poignant moment.] "What have I done to deserve this?" [he exclaimed. The relief from anxiety, so generously proffered, entirely overcame him; and for the first time, he allowed himself to confess that in the long struggle against ill-health, he had been beaten; but, as he said, only enough to teach him humility.

His first trip in search of health was in 1872, when he obtained two months' leave of absence, and prepared to go to the Mediterranean. His lectures to women on Physiology at South Kensington were taken over by Dr. Michael Foster, who had already acted as his substitute in the Fullerian course of 1868. But even on this cruise after health he was not altogether free from business. The stores of biscuit at Gibraltar and Malta were infested with a small grub and its cocoons. Complaints to the home authorities were met by the answer that the stores were prepared from the purest materials and sent out perfectly free from the pest. Discontent among the men was growing serious, when he was requested by the Admiralty to investigate the nature of the grub and the best means of preventing its ravages. In the end he found that the biscuits were packed within range of stocks of newly arrived, unpurified cocoa, from which the eggs were blown into the stores while being packed, and there hatched out. Thereafter the packing was done in another place and the complaints ceased.]

January 3, 1872.

My dear Dohrn,

It is true enough that I am somewhat "erkrankt," though beyond general weariness, incapacity and disgust with things in general, I do not precisely know what is the matter with me.

Unwillingly, I begin to suspect that I overworked myself last year. Doctors talk seriously to me, and declare that all sorts of wonderful things will happen if I do not take some more efficient rest than I have had for a long time. My wife adds her quota of persuasion and admonition, until I really begin to think I must do something, if only to have peace.

What if I were to come and look you up in Naples, somewhere in February, as soon as my lectures are over?

The "one-plate system" might cure me of my incessant dyspeptic nausea. A detestable grub—larva of Ephestia elatella—has been devouring Her Majesty's stores of biscuits at Gibraltar. I have had to look into his origin, history, and best way of circumventing him—and maybe I shall visit Gibraltar and perhaps Malta. In that case, you will see me turn up some of these days at the Palazzo Torlonia.

Herbert Spencer has written a friendly attack on "Administrative Nihilism," which I will send you; in the same number of the "Fortnightly" there is an absurd epicene splutter on the same subject by Mill's step-daughter, Miss Helen Taylor. I intended to publish the paper separately, with a note about Spencer's criticism, but I have had no energy nor faculty to do anything lately.

Tell Lankester, with best regards, that I believe the teaching of teachers in 1872 is arranged, and that I shall look for his help in due course.

The "Happy family" have had the measles since you saw them, but they are well again.

I write in Jermyn Street, so they cannot send messages; otherwise there would be a chorus from them and the wife of good wishes and kind remembrances.

Ever yours,

T.H. Huxley.

[He left Southampton on January 11, in the "Malta." On the 16th, he notes in his diary,] "I was up just in time see the great portal of the Mediterranean well. It was a lovely morning, and nothing could be grander than Ape Hill on one side and the Rock on the other, looking like great lions or sphinxes on each side of a gateway."

[The morning after his arrival he breakfasted with Admiral Hornby, who sent him over to Tangier in the "Helicon," giving the Bishop of Gibraltar a passage at the same time. This led him to note down,] "How the naval men love Baxter and all his works." [A letter from Dr. Hooker to Sir John Hay ensured him a most hospitable welcome, though continual rain spoiled his excursions. On the 21st he returned to Gibraltar, leaving three days later in the "Nyanza" for Alexandria, which was reached on February 1. At that "muddy hole" he landed in pouring rain, and it was not till he reached Cairo the following day that he at last got into his longed-for sunshine.

Seeing that three of his eight weeks had been spent in merely getting to sunshine, his wife and doctor conspired to apply for a third month of leave, which was immediately granted, so that he was able to accept the invitation of two friends to go with them up the Nile as far as Assouan in that most restful of conveyances, a dahabieh.

Cairo more than answered his expectations. He stayed here till the 13th, making several excursions in company with Sir W. Gregory, notably to Boulak Museum, where he particularly notes the "man with ape" from Memphis; and, of course, the pyramids, of which he remarks that Cephren's is cased at the top with limestone, not granite. His notebook and sketch-book show that he was equally interested in archeology, in the landscape and scenes of everyday life, and in the peculiar geographical and geological features of the country. His first impression of the Delta was its resemblance to Belgium and Lincolnshire. He has sections and descriptions of the Mokatta hill, and the windmill mound, with a general panorama of the surrounding country and an explanation of it. He remarks at Memphis how the unburnt brick of which the mounds are made up had in many places become remanie into a stratified deposit—distinguishable from Nile mud chiefly by the pottery fragments—and notes the bearing of this fact on the Cairo mounds. It is the same on his trip up the Nile; he jots down the geology whenever opportunity offered; remarks, as indication of the former height of the river, a high mud-bank beyond Edfou, and near Assouan a pot-hole in the granite fifty feet above the present level. Here is a detailed description of the tomb of Aahmes; there a river-scene beside the pyramid of Meidum; or vivid sketches of vulture and jackal at a meal in the desert, the jackal in possession of the carcass, the vulture impatiently waiting his good pleasure for the last scraps; of the natives working at the endless shadoofs; of a group of listeners around a professional story-teller—unfinished, for he was observed sketching them.

Egypt left a profound impression upon him. His artistic delight in it apart, the antiquities and geology of the country were a vivid illustration to his trained eye of the history of man and the influence upon him of the surrounding country, the link between geography and history.

He left behind him for a while a most unexpected memorial of his visit. A friend not long after going to the pyramids, was delighted to find himself thus adjured by a donkey-boy, who tried to cut out his rival with "Not him donkey, sah; him donkey bad, sah; my donkey good; my donkey 'Fessor-uxley donkey, sah." It appears that the Cairo donkey-boys have a way of naming their animals after celebrities whom they have borne on their backs.

While at Thebes, on his way down the river again, he received news of the death of the second son of Matthew Arnold, to whom he wrote the following letter:—]

Thebes, March 10, 1872.

My dear Arnold,

I cannot tell you how shocked I was to see in the papers we received yesterday the announcement of the terrible blow which has fallen upon Mrs. Arnold and yourself.

Your poor boy looked such a fine manly fellow the last time I saw him, when we dined at your house, that I had to read the paragraph over and over again before I could bring myself to believe what I read. And it is such a grievous opening of a wound hardly yet healed that I hardly dare to think of the grief which must have bowed down Mrs. Arnold and yourself.

I hardly know whether I do well in writing to you. If such trouble befell me there are very few people in the world from whom I could bear even sympathy—but you would be one of them, and therefore I hope that you will forgive a condolence which will reach you so late as to disturb rather than soothe, for the sake of the hearty affection which dictates it.

My wife has told me of the very kind letter you wrote her. I was thoroughly broken down when I left England, and did not get much better until I fell into the utter and absolute laziness of dahabieh life. A month of that has completely set me up. I am as well as ever; and though very grateful to Old Nile for all that he has done for me—not least for a whole universe of new thoughts and pictures of life—I begin to feel strongly

'the need of a world of men for me.'

But I am not going to overwork myself again. Pray make my kindest remembrances to Mrs. Arnold, and believe me, always yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

[Leaving Assouan on March 3, and Cairo on the 18th, he returned by way of Messina to Naples, taking a day at Catania to look at Etna. At Naples he found his friend Dohrn was absent, and his place as host was filled by his father. Vesuvius was ascended, Pozzuoli and Pompeii visited, and two days spent in Rome.]

Hotel de Grande Bretagne, Naples, March 31, 1872.

My dear Tyndall,

Your very welcome letter did not reach me until the 18th of March, when I returned to Cairo from my expedition to Assouan. Like Johnny Gilpin, I "little thought when I set out, of running such a rig"; but while at Cairo I fell in with Ossory of the Athenaeum, and a very pleasant fellow, Charles Ellis, who had taken a dahabieh, and were about to start up the Nile. They invited me to take possession of a vacant third cabin, and I accepted their hospitality, with the intention of going as far as Thebes and returning on my own hook. But when we got to Thebes I found there was no getting away again without much more exposure and fatigue than I felt justified in facing just then, and as my friends showed no disposition to be rid of me, I stuck to the boat, and only left them on the return voyage at Rodu, which is the terminus of the railway, about 150 miles from Cairo.

We had an unusually quick journey, as I was little more than a month away from Cairo, and as my companions made themselves very agreeable, it was very pleasant. I was not particularly well at first, but by degrees the utter rest of this "always afternoon" sort of life did its work, and I am as well and vigorous now as ever I was in my life.

I should have been home within a fortnight of the time I had originally fixed. This would have been ample time to have enabled me to fulfil all the engagements I had made before starting; and Donnelly had given me to understand that "My Lords" would not trouble their heads about my stretching my official leave. Nevertheless I was very glad to find the official extension (which was the effect of my wife's and your and Bence Jones's friendly conspiracy) awaiting me at Cairo. A rapid journey home via Brindisi might have rattled my brains back into the colloid state in which they were when I left England. Looking back through the past six months I begin to see that I have had a narrow escape from a bad breakdown, and I am full of good resolutions.

As the first-fruit of these you see that I have given up the School Board, and I mean to keep clear of all that semi-political work hereafter. I see that Sandon (whom I met at Alexandria) and Miller have followed my example, and that Lord Lawrence is likely to go. What a skedaddle!

It seems very hard to escape, however. Since my arrival here, on taking up the "Times" I saw a paragraph about the Lord Rectorship of St. Andrews. After enumerating a lot of candidates for that honour, the paragraph concluded, "But we understand that at present Professor Huxley has the best chance." It is really too bad if any one has been making use of my name without my permission. But I don't know what to do about it. I had half a mind to write to Tulloch to tell him that I can't and won't take any such office, but I should look rather foolish if he replied that it was a mere newspaper report, and that nobody intended to put me up.

Egypt interested me profoundly, but I must reserve the tale of all I did and saw there for word of mouth. From Alexandria I went to Messina, and thence made an excursion along the lovely Sicilian coast to Catania and Etna. The old giant was half covered with snow, and this fact, which would have tempted you to go to the top, stopped me. But I went to the Val del Bove, whence all the great lava streams have flowed for the last two centuries, and feasted my eyes with its rugged grandeur. From Messina I came on here, and had the great good fortune to find Vesuvius in eruption. Before this fact the vision of good Bence Jones forbidding much exertion vanished into thin air, and on Thursday up I went in company with Ray Lankester and my friend Dohrn's father, Dohrn himself being unluckily away. We had a glorious day, and did not descend till late at night. The great crater was not very active, and contented itself with throwing out great clouds of steam and volleys of red-hot stones now and then. These were thrown towards the south-west side of the cone, so that it was practicable to walk all round the northern and eastern lip, and look down into the Hell Gate. I wished you were there to enjoy the sight as much as I did. No lava was issuing from the great crater, but on the north side of this, a little way below the top, an independent cone had established itself as the most charming little pocket-volcano imaginable. It could not have been more than 100 feet high, and at the top was a crater not more than six or seven feet across. Out of this, with a noise exactly resembling a blast furnace and a slowly-working high pressure steam engine combined, issued a violent torrent of steam and fragments of semi-fluid lava as big as one's fist, and sometimes bigger. These shot up sometimes as much as 100 feet, and then fell down on the sides of the little crater, which could be approached within fifty feet without any danger. As darkness set in, the spectacle was most strange. The fiery stream found a lurid reflection in the slowly-drifting steam cloud, which overhung it, while the red-hot stones which shot through the cloud shone strangely beside the quiet stars in a moonless sky.

Not from the top of this cinder cone, but from its side, a couple of hundred feet down, a stream of lava issued. At first it was not more than a couple of feet wide, but whether from receiving accessions or merely from the different form of slope, it got wider on its journey down to the Atrio del Cavallo, a thousand feet below. The slope immediately below the exit must have been near fifty, but the lava did not flow quicker than very thick treacle would do under like circumstances. And there were plenty of freshly cooled lava streams about, inclined at angles far greater than those which that learned Academician, Elie de Beaumont, declared to be possible. Naturally I was ashamed of these impertinent lava currents, and felt inclined to call them "Laves mousseuses." [Elie de Beaumont "is said to have 'damned himself to everlasting fame' by inventing the nickname of 'la science moussante' for Evolutionism." See "Life of Darwin" 2 185.]

Courage, my friend, behold land! I know you love my handwriting. I am off to Rome to-day, and this day-week, if all goes well, I shall be under my own roof-tree again. In fact I hope to reach London on Saturday evening. It will be jolly to see your face again.

Ever yours faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

My best remembrances to Hirst if you see him before I do.

[My father reached home on April 6, sunburnt and bearded almost beyond recognition, but not really well, for as soon as he began work again in London, his old enemy returned. Early hours, the avoidance of society and societies, an hour's riding before starting at nine for South Kensington, were all useless; the whole year was poisoned until a special diet prescribed by Dr. (afterwards sir) Andrew Clark, followed by another trip abroad, effected a cure. I remember his saying once that he learned by sad experience that such a holiday as that in Egypt was no good for him. What he really required was mountain air and plenty of exercise. The following letters fill up the outline of this period:—]

26 Abbey Place, May 20, 1872.

My dear Dohrn,

I suppose that you are now back in Naples, perambulating the Chiaja, and looking ruefully on the accumulation of ashes on the foundations of the aquarium! The papers, at any rate, tell us that the ashes of Vesuvius have fallen abundantly at Naples. Moreover, that abominable municipality is sure to have made the eruption an excuse for all sorts of delays. May the gods give you an extra share of temper and patience!

What an unlucky dog our poor Ray is, to go and get fever when of all times in the world's history he should not have had it. However, I hear he is better and on his way home. I hope he will be well enough when he returns not only to get his Fellowship, but to help me in my schoolmaster work in June and July.

I was greatly disgusted to miss you in Naples, but it was something to find your father instead. What a vigorous, genial YOUNGSTER of three score and ten he is. I declare I felt quite aged beside him. We had a glorious day on Vesuvius, and behaved very badly by leaving him at the inn for I do not know how many hours, while we wandered about the cone. But he had a very charming young lady for companion, and possibly had the best of it. I am very sorry that at the last I went off in a hurry without saying "Good-bye" to him, but I desired Lankester to explain, and I am sure he will have sympathised with my anxiety to see Rome.

I returned, thinking myself very well, but a bad fit of dyspepsia seized me, and I found myself obliged to be very idle and very careful of myself—neither of which things are to my taste. But I am right again now, and hope to have no more backslidings. However, I am afraid I may not be able to attend the Brighton meeting. In which case you will have to pay us a visit, wherever we may be—where, we have not yet made up our minds, but it will not be so far as St. Andrews.

Now for a piece of business. The new Governor of Ceylon is a friend of mine, and is proposing to set up a Natural History Museum in Ceylon. He wants a curator—some vigorous fellow with plenty of knowledge and power of organisation who will make use of his great opportunities. He tells me he thinks he can start him with 350 pounds sterling a year (and a house) with possible increase to 400 pounds sterling. I do not know any one here who would answer the purpose. Can you recommend me any one? If you can, let me know at once, and don't take so long in writing to me as I have been in writing to you.

I await the "Prophecies of the Holy Antonius" anxiously. [His work on the development of the Arthropoda or Spider family.] Like the Jews of old, I come of an unbelieving generation, and need a sign. The bread and the oil, also the chamber in the wall shall not fail the prophet when he comes in August: nor Donner and Blitzes either.

I leave the rest of the space for the wife.

Ever yours,

T.H. Huxley.

[The following is in reply to a jest of Dr. Dohrn's—who was still a bachelor—upon a friend's unusual sort of offering to a young lady.]

I suspected the love affair you speak of, and thought the young damsel very attractive. I suppose it will come to nothing, even if he be disposed to add his hand to the iron and quinine, in the next present he offers...and, oh my Diogenes, happy in a tub of arthropodous Entwickelungsgeschichte [History of Development.], despise not beefsteaks, nor wives either. They also are good.

Jermyn Street, June 5, 1872.

My dear Dohrn,

I have written to the Governor of Ceylon, and enclosed the first half of your letter to me to him as he understands High Dutch. I have told him that the best thing he can do is to write to you at Naples and tell you he will be very happy to see you as soon as you can come. And that if you do come you will give him the best possible advice about his museum, and let him have no rest until he has given you a site for a zoological station.

I have no doubt you will get a letter from him in three weeks or so. His name is Gregory, and you will find him a good-humoured acute man of the world, with a very great general interest in scientific and artistic matters. Indeed in art I believe he is a considerable connoisseur.

I am very grieved to hear of your father's serious illness. At his age cerebral attacks are serious, and when we spent so many pleasant hours together at Naples, he seemed to have an endless store of vigour—very much like his son Anton.

What put it into your head that I had any doubt of your power of work? I am ready to believe that you are Hydra in the matter of heads and Briareus in the matter of hands.

...If you go to Ceylon I shall expect you to come back by way of England. It's the shortest route anywhere from India, though it may not look so on the map.

How am I? Oh, getting along and just keeping the devil of dyspepsia at arm's length. The wife and other members of the H.F. are well, and would send you greetings if they knew I was writing to you.

Ever yours faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

[A little later Von Willemoes Suhm] ("why the deuce does he have such a long name, instead of a handy monosyllable are dissyllable like Dohrn or Huxley?") [was recommended for the post. He afterwards was one of the scientific staff of the "Challenger," and died during the voyage.]

Morthoe, near Barnstaple, North Devon, August 5, 1872.

My dear Dohrn,

I trust you have not been very wroth with me for my long delay in answering your last letter. For the last six weeks I have been very busy lecturing daily to a batch of schoolmasters, and looking after their practical instruction in the laboratory which the Government has, at last, given me. In the "intervals of business" I have been taking my share in a battle which has been raging between my friend Hooker of Kew and his official chief...and moreover I have just had strength enough to get my daily work done and no more, and everything that could be put off has gone to the wall. Three days ago, the "Happy Family," bag and baggage, came to this remote corner, where I propose to take a couple of months' entire rest—and put myself in order for next winter's campaign. It is a little village five miles from the nearest town (which is Ilfracombe), and our house is at the head of a ravine running down to the sea. Our backs are turned to England and our faces to America with no land that I know of between. The country about is beautiful, and if you will come we will put you up at the little inn, and show you something better than even Swanage. There are slight difficulties about the commissariat, but that is the Hausfrau's business, and not mine. At the worst, bread, eggs, milk, and rabbits are certain, and the post from London takes two days!

Morthoe, Ilfracombe, North Devon, August 23, 1872.

My dear Whirlwind,

I promise you all my books, past, present, and to come for the Aquarium. The best part about them is that they will not take up much room. Ask for Owen's by all means; "Fas est etiam ab hoste doceri." I am very glad you have got the British Association publications, as it will be a good precedent for the Royal Society.

Have you talked to Hooker about marine botany? He may be able to help you as soon as X. the accursed (may jackasses sit upon his grandmother's grave, as we say in the East) leaves him alone.

It is hateful that you should be in England without seeing us, and for the first time I lament coming here. The children howled in chorus when they heard that you could not come. At this moment the whole tribe and their mother have gone to the sea, and I must answer your letter before the post goes out, which it does here about half an hour after it comes in.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

[In 1872 Huxley was at length enabled to establish in his regular classes a system of science teaching based upon laboratory work by the students, which he had long felt to be the only true method. It involved the verification of every fact by each student, and was a training in scientific method even more than in scientific fact. Had circumstances only permitted, the new epoch in biological teaching might have been antedated by many years. But, as he says in the preface to the "Practical Biology," 1875:—]

Practical work was forbidden by the limitations of space in the building in Jermyn Street, which possessed no room applicable to the purpose of a laboratory, and I was obliged to content myself, for many years, with what seemed the next best thing, namely, as full an exposition as I could give of the characters of certain plants and animals, selected as types of vegetable and animal organisation, by way of introduction to systematic zoology and paleontology.

[There was no laboratory work, but he would show an experiment or a dissection during the lecture or perhaps for a few minutes after, when the audience crowded round the lecture table.

The opportunity came in 1871. As he afterwards impressed upon the great city companies in regard to technical education, the teaching of science throughout the country turned upon the supply of trained teachers. The part to be played by elementary science under the Education Act of 1870, added urgency to the question of proper teaching. With this in view, he organised a course of instruction for those who had been preparing pupils for the examinations of the Science and Art Department, "scientific missionaries," as he described them to Dr. Dohrn.

In the promotion of the practical teaching of biology (writes the late Jeffery Parker, "Natural Science" 8 49), Huxley's services can hardly be overestimated. Botanists had always been in the habit of distributing flowers to their students, which they could dissect or not as they chose; animal histology was taught in many colleges under the name of practical physiology; and at Oxford an excellent system of zoological work had been established by the late Professor Rolleston. ("Rolleston (Professor Lankester writes to me) was the first to systematically conduct the study of Zoology and Comparative Anatomy in this country by making use of a carefully selected series of animals. His 'types' were the Rat, the Common Pigeon, the Frog, the Perch, the Crayfish, Blackbeetle, Anodon, Snail, Earthworm, Leech, Tapeworm. He had a series of dissections of these mounted, also loose dissections and elaborate manuscript descriptions. The student went through this series, dissecting fresh specimens for himself. After some ten years' experience Rolleston printed his manuscript directions and notes as a book, called 'Forms of Animal Life.'

"This all preceded the practical class at South Kensington in 1871. I have no doubt that Rolleston was influenced in his plan by your father's advice. But Rolleston had the earlier opportunity of putting the method into practice.

"Your father's series of types were chosen so as to include plants, and he gave more attention to microscopic forms and to microscopic structure than did Rolleston."

It was distinctive of the lectures that they were on biology, on plants as well as animals, to illustrate all the fundamental features of living things.)

But the biological laboratory, as it is now understood, may be said to date from about 1870, when Huxley, with the cooperation of Professors Foster, Rutherford, Lankester, Martin, and others (T.J. Parker, G.B. Howes, and the present Sir W. Thiselton Dyer, K.C.M.G., C.I.E.,), held short summer classes for science teachers at South Kensington, the daily work consisting of an hour's lecture followed by four hours' laboratory work, in which the students verified for themselves facts which they had hitherto heard about and taught to their unfortunate pupils from books alone. The naive astonishment and delight of the more intelligent among them was sometimes almost pathetic. One clergyman, who had for years conducted classes in physiology under the Science and Art Department, was shown a drop of his own blood under the microscope. "Dear me!" he exclaimed, "it's just like the picture in Huxley's 'Physiology.'"

Later, in 1872, when the biological department of the Royal School of Mines was transferred to South Kensington, this method was adopted as part of the regular curriculum of the school, and from that time the teaching "of zoology by lectures alone became an anachronism."

The first of these courses to schoolmasters took place, as has been said, in 1871. Some large rooms on the ground floor of the South Kensington Museum were used for the purpose. There was no proper laboratory, but professor and demonstrators rigged up everything as wanted. Huxley was in the full tide of that more than natural energy which preceded his breakdown in health, and gave what Professor Ray Lankester describes as "a wonderful course of lectures," one every day from ten to eleven for six weeks, in June and half July. The three demonstrators (those named first on the list above) each took a third of the class, about thirty-five apiece. "Great enthusiasm prevailed. We went over a number of plants and of animals—including microscopic work and some physiological experiment. The 'types' were more numerous than in later courses."

In 1872 the new laboratory—the present one—was ready.] "I have a laboratory," [writes Huxley to Dohrn,] "which it shall do your eyes good to behold when you come back from Ceylon, the short way." [(i.e. via England.) here a similar course, under the same demonstrators, assisted by H.N. Martin, was given in the summer, Huxley, though very shaky in health, making a point of carrying them out himself.]

26 Abbey Place, June 4, 1872.

My dear Tyndall,

I MUST be at work on examination papers all day to-day, but to-morrow I am good to lunch with you (and abscond from the Royal Commission, which will get on very well without me) or to go with you and call on your friends, whichever may be most convenient.

Many thanks for all your kind and good advice about the lectures, but I really think they will not be too much for me, and it is of the utmost importance I should carry them on.

They are the commencement of a new system of teaching which, if I mistake not, will grow into a big thing and bear great fruit, and just at this present moment (nobody is necessary very long) I am the necessary man to carry it on. I could not get a suppleant if I would, and you are no more the man than I am to let a pet scheme fall through for the fear of a little risk of self. And really and truly I find that by taking care I pull along very well. Moreover, it isn't my brains that get wrong, but only my confounded stomach.

I have read your memorial [In the affair of Dr. Hooker already referred to.] which is very strong and striking, but a difficulty occurs to me about a good deal of it, and that is that it won't do to quote Hooker's official letters before they have been called for in Parliament, or otherwise made public. We should find ourselves in the wrong officially, I am afraid, by doing so. However we can discuss this when we meet. I will be at the Athenaeum at 4 o'clock.

Ever yours faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

[As for the teaching by "types," which was the most salient feature of his method, and therefore the most easily applied and misapplied, Professor Parker continues:—

Huxley's method of teaching was based upon the personal examination by the student of certain "types" of animals and plants selected with a view of illustrating the various groups. But, in his lectures, these types were not treated as the isolated things they necessarily appear in a laboratory manual or an examination syllabus; each, on the contrary, took its proper place as an example of a particular grade of structure, and no student of ordinary intelligence could fail to see that the types were valuable, not for themselves, but simply as marking, so to speak, the chapters of a connected narrative. Moreover, in addition to the types, a good deal of work of a more general character was done. Thus, while we owe to Huxley more than to any one else the modern system of teaching biology, he is by no means responsible for the somewhat arid and mechanical aspect it has assumed in certain quarters.

The application of the same system to botanical teaching was inaugurated in 1873, when, being compelled to go abroad for his health, he arranged that Mr. (now Sir W.) Thiselton Dyer should take his place and lecture on Botany.

The "Elementary Instruction in Biology," published in 1875, was a text-book based upon this system. This book, in writing which Huxley was assisted by his demonstrator, H.N. Martin, was reprinted thirteen times before 1888, when it was "Revised and Extended by Howes and Scott," his later assistants. The revised edition is marked by one radical change, due to the insistence of his demonstrator, the late Professor Jeffery Parker. In the first edition, the lower forms of life were first dealt with; from simple cells—amoeba, yeast-plant, blood-corpuscle—the student was taken through an ascending series of plants and of animals, ending with the frog or rabbit. But] "the experience of the Lecture-room and the Laboratory taught me," [writes Huxley in the new preface,] "that philosophical as it might be in theory, it had defects in practice." [The process might be regarded as not following the scientific rule of proceeding from the known to the unknown; while the small and simple organisms required a skill in handling high-power microscopes which was difficult for beginners to acquire. Hence the course was reversed, and began with the more familiar type of the rabbit or frog. This was Rolleston's practice; but it may be noted that Professor Ray Lankester has always maintained and further developed "the original Huxleian plan of beginning with the same microscopic forms" as being a most important philosophic improvement on Rolleston's plan, and giving, he considers, "the truer 'twist,' as it were, to a student's mind."

When the book was sent to Darwin, he wrote back (November 12, 1875):—

My dear Huxley,

Many thanks for your biology, which I have read. It was a real stroke of genius to think of such a plan. Lord, how I wish that I had gone through such a course.

Ever yours,

Charles Darwin.

A large portion of his time and energy was occupied in the organisation of this course of teaching for teachers, and its elaboration before being launched on a larger scale in October, when the Biological Department of the Jermyn Street school was transferred to the new buildings at South Kensington, fitted with laboratories which were to excite his friend Dr. Dohrn's envy. But he was also at work upon his share of the "Science Primers," so far as his still uncertain health allowed. This and the affairs of the British Association are the subject of several letters to Sir Henry Roscoe and Dr. Tyndall.]

26 Abbey Place, April 8, 1872.

My dear Roscoe,

Many thanks for your kind letter of welcome. My long rest has completely restored me. As my doctor told me, I was sound, wind and limb, and had merely worn myself out. I am not going to do that again, and you see that I have got rid of the School Board. It was an awful incubus!

Oddly enough I met the Ashtons in the Vatican, and heard about your perplexities touching Oxford. I should have advised you to do as you have done. I think that you have a great piece of work to do at Owens College, and that you will do it. If you had gone to Oxford you would have sacrificed all the momentum you have gained in Manchester; and would have had to begin de novo, among conditions which, I imagine, it is very hard for a non-University man to appreciate and adjust himself to.

I like the look of the "Primers" (of which Macmillan has sent me copies to-day) very much, and shall buckle to at mine as soon as possible. I am very glad you did not wait for me. I remained in a very shaky condition up to the middle of March, and could do nothing.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

The wife unites with me in kind regards to Mrs. Roscoe and yourself.

Morthoe, Ilfracombe, North Devon, September 9, 1872.

My dear Tyndall,

I was very glad to have news of you, and to hear that you are vigorous.

My outing hitherto has not been very successful, so far as the inward man is concerned at least, for the weather has been good enough. But I have been worried to death with dyspepsia and the hyperchondriacal bedevilments that follow in its train, until I am seriously thinking of returning to town to see if the fine air of St. John's Wood (as the man says in "Punch") won't enable me to recover from the effects of the country.

I wish I were going with you to Yankee Land, not to do any lecturing, God forbid! but to be a quiet spectator in a corner of the enthusiastic audiences. I am as lazy as a dog, and the role of looker-on would just suit me. However, I have a good piece of work to do in organising my new work at South Kensington.

I have just asked my children what message they have to send to you, and they send their love; very sorry they won't see you before you go, and hope you won't come back speaking through your nose!

I shall be in town this week or next, and therefore shall see you.

Ever yours faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

26 Abbey Place, September 17, 1872.

My dear Roscoe,

Your letter has followed me from Morthoe here. We had good enough weather in Devon—but my stay there was marred by the continuous dyspepsia and concurrent hyperchondriacal incapacity. At last, I could not stand it any longer, and came home for "change of air," leaving the wife and chicks to follow next week. By dint of living on cocoa and Revalenta, and giving up drink, tobacco, and all other things that make existence pleasant, I am getting better.

What was your motive in getting kicked by a horse? I stopped away from the Association without that; and am not sorry to have been out of the way of the X. business. What is to become of the association if — is to monopolise it? And then there was that scoundrel, Louis Napoleon—to whom no honest man ought to speak—gracing the scene. I am right glad I was out of it.

I am at my wits' end to suggest a lecturer for you. I wish I could offer myself, but I have refused everything of that sort on the score of health; and moreover, I am afraid of my wife!

What do you say to Ramsay? He lectures very well. I have done nothing whatever to the Primer. Stewart sent me Geikie's letter this morning, and I have asked Macmillan to send Geikie the proofs of my Primer so far as they go. We must not overlap more than can be helped.

I have not seen Hooker yet since my return. While all this row has been going on, I could not ask him to do anything for us. And until X. is dead and d—d (officially at any rate), I am afraid there will be little peace for him.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

Please remember me very kindly to Mrs. Roscoe.

[In a letter of September 25 is a reference to the way in which his increasing family had outgrown his house in Abbey Place. Early in the preceding year, he had come to the decision to buy a small house in the same neighbourhood, and add to it so as to give elbow-room to each and all of the family. This was against the advice of his friend and legal adviser, to whom he wrote announcing his decision, as follows. The letter was adorned with a sketch of an absurd cottage, "Ye House!" perched like a windmill on a kind of pedestal, and with members of the family painfully ascending a ladder to the upper story, above the ominous legend, "Staircase forgotten."]

March 20, 1871.

My dear Burton,

There is something delightfully refreshing in rushing into a piece of practical work in the teeth of one's legal adviser.

If the lease of a piece of ground whereon I am going to build mine house come to you, will you see if it's all right.

Yours wilfully,

T.H. Huxley.

[This house, Number 4 Marlborough Place, stands on the north side of that quiet street, close to its junction with Abbey Road. It is next door to the Presbyterian Church, on the other side of which again is a Jewish synagogue. The irregular front of the house, with the original cottage, white-painted and deep eaved, joined by a big porch to the new uncompromising square face of yellow brick, distinguished only by its extremely large windows, was screened from the road by a high oak paling, and a well-grown row of young lime-trees. Taken as a whole, it was not without character, and certainly was unlike most London houses. It was built for comfort, not beauty; designed, within stringent limits as to cost, to give each member of the family room to get away by himself or herself if so disposed. Moreover, the gain in space made it more possible to see something of friends or put up a guest, than in the small and crowded house in Abbey Place.

A small garden lay in front of the house; a considerably larger garden behind, wherein the chief ornament was then a large apple-tree, that never failed to spread a cloud of blossom for my father's birthday, the 4th of May.

Over the way, too, for many years we were faced by a long garden full of blossoming pear-trees in which thrushes and blackbirds sang and nested, belonging to a desolate house in the Abbey Road, which was tenanted by a solitary old man, supposed to be a male prototype of Miss Havisham in "Great Expectations."

The move was accompanied by a unique and unpleasant experience. A knavish fellow, living in a cottage close to the foot of the garden, sought to blackmail the new comer, under threat of legal proceedings, alleging that a catchment well for surface drainage had made his basement damp. Unfortunately for his case, it could be shown that the pipes had not yet been connected with the well, and when he carried out his threat, he gained nothing from his suit in Chancery and his subsequent appeal, except some stinging remarks from Vice-Chancellor Malins.]

I am afraid the brute is impecunious [wrote my father after the first suit failed], and that I shall get nothing out of him. So I shall have had three months' worry, and be fined 100 pounds sterling or so for being wholly and absolutely in the right.

[Happily the man turned out to have enough means to pay the bulk of the costs; but that was no compensation for the mental worry and consequent ill-health entailed from November to June.

The only amusing point in the whole affair was when the plaintiff's solicitors had the face to file an affidavit before the Vice-Chancellor himself in answer to his strictures upon the case, "about as regular a proceeding," reports Mr. Burton, "as for a middy to reply upon the Post Captain on his own quarter-deck."

The move was made in the third week of December (1872) amid endless rain and mud and with workmen still in the house. It was attended by one inconvenience. He writes to Darwin on December 20, 1872:—]

I am utterly disgusted at having only just received your note of Tuesday. But the fact is, there is a certain inconvenience about having FOUR addresses as has been my case for the most part of this week, in consequence of our moving—and as I have not been to Jermyn Street before to-day, I have missed your note. I should run round to Queen Anne Street now on the chance of catching you, but I am bound here by an appointment.

[One incident of the move, however, was more agreeable. Mr. Herbert Spencer took the opportunity of sending a New Year's gift for the new house, in the shape of a handsome clock, wishing, as he said, "to express in some way more empathic than by words, my sense of the many kindnesses I have received at your hands during the twenty years of our friendship. Remembrance of the things you have done in furtherance of my aims, and of the invaluable critical aid you have given me, with so much patience and at so much cost of time, has often made me feel how much I owe you."

After a generous reference to occasions when the warmth of debate might have betrayed him into more vigorous expressions than he intended, he concludes:—

But inadequately as I may ordinarily show it, you will (knowing that I am tolerably candid) believe me when I say that there is no one whose judgment on all subjects I so much respect, or whose friendship I so highly value.

It may be remembered that the 1872 address on "Administrative Nihilism" led to a reply from the pen of Mr. Spencer, as the champion of Individualism. When my father sent him the volume in which this address was printed, he wrote back a letter (September 29, 1873) which is characterised by the same feeling. It expresses his thanks for the book, "and many more for the kind expression of feeling in the preface. If you had intended to set an example to the Philistines of the way in which controversial differences may be maintained without any decrease of sympathy, you could not have done it more perfectly."

In connection with the building of the house, Tyndall had advanced a sum of money to his friend, and with his usual generosity, not only received interest with the greatest reluctance, but would have liked to make a gift of the principal. He writes, "If I remain a bachelor I will circumvent you—if not—not. It cleaves to me like dirt—and that is why you wish to get rid of it." To this he received answer:—

February 26, 1873.

I am not to be deterred by any amount of bribery and corruption, from bringing you under the yoke of a "rare and radiant,"—whenever I discover one competent to undertake the ticklish business of governing you. I hope she will be "radiant,"—uncommonly "rare" she certainly will be!

Two years later this loan was paid off, with the following letter:—]

4 Marlborough Place, January 11, 1875.

My dear old Shylock,

My argosies have come in, and here is all that was written in the bond! If you want the pound of flesh too, you know it is at your service, and my Portia won't raise that pettifogging objection to shedding a little blood into the bargain, which that other one did.

Ever yours faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

[On October 24 Miss Jex Blake wrote to him to ask his help for herself and the other women medical students at Edinburgh. For two years they had only been able to get anatomical teaching in a mixed class; but wishing to have a separate class, at least for the present, they had tried to arrange for one that session. The late demonstrator at the Surgeons' Hall, who had given them most of their teaching before, had undertaken to teach this separate class, but was refused recognition by the University Court, on the ground that they had no evidence of his qualifications, while refusing to let him prove his qualification by examination. This the women students understood to be an indirect means of suppressing their aspirations; they therefore begged Huxley to examine their instructor with a view to giving him a certificate which should carry weight with the University Court.

He replied:—]

To Miss Jex Blake.

October 28, 1872.

Dear Madam,

While I fully sympathise with the efforts made by yourself and others, to obtain for women the education requisite to qualify them for medical practice, and while I think that women who have the inclination and the capacity to follow the profession of medicine are most unjustly dealt with if any obstacles beyond those which are natural and inevitable are placed in their way, I must nevertheless add, that I as completely sympathise with those Professors of Anatomy, Physiology, and Obstetrics, who object to teach such subjects to mixed classes of young men and women brought together without any further evidence of moral and mental fitness for such association than the payment of their fees.

In fact, with rare exceptions, I have refused to admit women to my own Lectures on Comparative Anatomy for many years past. But I should not hesitate to teach anything I know to a class composed of women; and I find it hard to believe that any one should really wish to prevent women from obtaining efficient separate instruction, and from being admitted to Examination for degrees upon the same terms as men.

You will therefore understand that I should be most glad to help you if I could—and it is with great regret that I feel myself compelled to refuse your request to examine Mr. H—.

In the first place I am in the midst of my own teaching, and with health not yet completely re-established I am obliged to keep clear of all unnecessary work. Secondly, such an examination must be practical, and I have neither dissecting-room available nor the anatomical license required for human dissection; and thirdly, it is not likely that the University authorities would attach much weight to my report on one or two days' work—if the fact that Mr. H— has already filled the office of anatomical Demonstrator (as I understand from you) does not satisfy them as to his competency.

I am, dear Madam, yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

[The last event of the year was that he was elected by the students Lord Rector of Aberdeen University—a position, the duties of which consist partly in attending certain meetings of the University Court, but more especially in delivering an address. This, however, was not required for another twelvemonth, and the address on "Universities, Actual and Ideal," was delivered in fulfilment of this duty in February 1874.

CHAPTER 2.4.

1873.

[The year opens with a letter to Tyndall, then on a lecturing tour in America:—]

4 Marlborough Place, Abbey Road, N.W., January 1, 1872 [1873].

My dear Tyndall,

I cannot let this day go by without wishing you a happy New Year, and lamenting your absence from our customary dinner. But Hirst and Spencer and Michael Foster are coming, and they shall drink your health in champagne while I do the like in cold water, making up by the strength of my good wishes for the weakness of the beverage.

You see I write from the new house. Getting into it was an awful job, made worse than needful by the infamous weather we have had for weeks and months, and by the stupid delays of the workmen, whom we had fairly to shove out at last as we came in. We are settling down by degrees, and shall be very comfortable by and by, though I do not suppose that we shall be able to use the drawing-room for two or three months to come. I am very glad to have made the change, but there is a drawback to everything in "this here wale," as Mrs. Gamp says and my present thorn in the flesh is a neighbour, who says I have injured him by certain operations in my garden, and is trying to get something out of me by Chancery proceedings. Fancy finding myself a defendant in Chancery!

It is particularly hard on me, as I have been especially careful to have nothing done without Burton's sanction and assurance that I was quite safe in law; and I would have given up anything [rather] than have got into bother of this kind. But "sich is life."

You seem to have been making a Royal Progress in Yankee-land. We have been uncommonly tickled with some of the reports of your lectures which reached us, especially with that which spoke of your having "a strong English accent."

The loss of your assistant seems to have been the only deduction to be made from your success. I am afraid you must have felt it much in all ways.

"My Lord" received your telegram only after the business of "securing Hirst" was done. That is one of the bright spots in a bad year for me. Goschen consulted Spottiswood and me independently about the headship of the new Naval College, and was naturally considerably surprised by the fact that we coincided in recommending Hirst...The upshot was that Goschen asked me to communicate with Hirst and see if he would be disposed to accept the offer. So I did, and found to my great satisfaction that Hirst took to the notion very kindly. I am sure he is the very best man for the post to be met with in the three kingdoms, having that rare combination of qualities by which he gets on with all manner of men, and singularly attracts young fellows. He will not only do his duty, but be beloved for doing it, which is what few people can compass.

I have little news to give you. The tail of the X.-Hooker storm is drifting over the scientific sky in the shape of fresh attacks by Owen on Hooker. Hooker answered the last angelically, and I hope they are at an end.

The wife has just come in and sends her love (but is careful to add "second-best"). The chicks grow visibly and audibly, and Jess looks quite a woman. All are well except myself, and I am getting better from a fresh breakdown of dyspepsia. I find that if I am to exist at all it must be on strictly ascetic principles, so there is hope of my dying in the odour of sanctity yet. If you recollect, Lancelot did not know that he should "die a holy man" till rather late in life. I have forgotten to tell you about the Rectorship of Aberdeen. I refused to stand at first, on the score of health, and only consented on condition that I should not be called upon to do any public work until after the long vacation. It was a very hard fight, and although I had an absolute majority of over fifty, the mode of election is such that one vote, in one of the four nations, would have turned the scale by giving my opponent the majority in that nation. We should then have been ties, and as the chancellor, who has under such circumstances a casting vote, would have (I believe) given it against me, I should have been beaten.

As it is, the fact of any one, who stinketh in the nostrils of orthodoxy, beating a Scotch peer at his own gates in the most orthodox of Scotch cities, is a curious sign of the times. The reason why they made such a tremendous fight for me, is I believe, that I may carry on the reforms commenced by Grant Duff, my predecessor. Unlike other Lord Rectors, he of Aberdeen is a power and can practically govern the action of the University during his tenure of office.

I saw Pollock yesterday, and he says that they want you back again. Curiously the same desire is epidemically prevalent among your friends, not least here.

Ever yours,

T.H. Huxley.

[In spite of his anxieties, his health was slowly improving under careful regimen. He published no scientific memoirs this year, but in addition to his regular lectures, he was working to finish his "Manual of Invertebrate Anatomy" and his "Introductory Primer," and to write his Aberdeen address; he was also at work upon the "Pedigree of the Horse" and on "Bodily Motion and Consciousness." He delivered a course to teachers on Psychology and Physiology, and was much occupied by the Royal Commission on Science. As a governor of Owens College he had various meetings to attend, though his duties did not extend, as some of his friends seem to have thought, to the appointment of a Professor of Physiology there.]

My life (he writes to Sir Henry Roscoe) is becoming a burden to me because of —. Why I do not know, but for some reason people have taken it into their heads that I have something to do with appointments in Owens College, and no fewer than three men of whose opinion I think highly have spoken or written to me urging —'s merits very strongly.

[This summer he again took a long holiday, thanks to the generosity of his friends, and with better results. He went with his old friend Hooker to the Auvergne, walking, geologising, sketching, and gradually discarding doctor's orders. Sir Joseph Hooker has very kindly written me a letter from which I give an account of this trip:—

It was during the many excursions we took together, either by ourselves or with one of my boys, that I knew him best at his best: and especially during one of several weeks' duration in the summer of 1873, which we spent in central France and Germany. He had been seriously ill, and was suffering from severe mental depression. For this he was ordered abroad by his physician, Sir A. Clark, to which step he offered a stubborn resistance. With Mrs. Huxley's approval, and being myself quite in the mood for a holiday, I volunteered to wrestle with him, and succeeded, holding out as an inducement a visit to the volcanic region of the Auvergne with Scrope's classical volume, which we both knew and admired, as a guide book.

We started on July 2nd, I loaded with injunctions from his physician as to what his patient was to eat, drink, and avoid, how much he was to sleep and rest, how little to talk and walk, etc., that would have made the expedition a perpetual burthen to me had I not believed that I knew enough of my friend's disposition and ailments to be convinced that not only health but happiness would be our companions throughout. Sure enough, for the first few days, including a short stay in Paris, his spirits were low indeed, but this gave me the opportunity of appreciating his remarkable command over himself and his ever-present consideration for his companion. Not a word or gesture of irritation ever escaped him; he exerted himself to obey the instructions laid down; nay, more, he was instant in his endeavour to save me trouble at hotels, railway stations, and ticket offices. Still, some mental recreation was required to expedite recovery, and he found it first by picking up at a bookstall, a "History of the Miracles of Lourdes," which were then exciting the religious fervour of France, and the interest of her scientific public. He entered with enthusiasm into the subject, getting together all the treatises upon it, favourable or the reverse, that were accessible, and I need hardly add, soon arrived at the conclusion, that the so-called miracles were in part illusions and for the rest delusions. As it may interest some of your readers to know what his opinion was in this early stage of the manifestations, I will give it as he gave it to me. It was a case of two peasant children sent in the hottest month of the year into a hot valley to collect sticks for firewood washed up by a stream, when one of them after stooping down opposite a heat-reverberating rock, was, in rising, attacked with a transient vertigo, under which she saw a figure in white against the rock. This bare fact being reported to the cure of the village, all the rest followed.

Soon after our arrival at Clermont Ferrand, your father had so far recovered his wonted elasticity of spirits that he took a keen interest in everything around, the museums, the cathedral, where he enjoyed the conclusion of the service by a military band which gave selections from the Figlia del Regimento, but above all he appreciated the walks and drives to the geological features of the environs. He reluctantly refrained from ascending the Puy de Dome, but managed the Pic Parion, Gergovia, Royat, and other points of interest without fatigue...

After Clermont they visited the other four great volcanic areas explored by Scrope, Mont Dore, the Cantal, Le Puy, and the valley of the Ardeche. Under the care of his friend, and relieved from the strain of work, my father's health rapidly improved. He felt no bad effects from a night at Mont Dore, when, owing to the crowd of invalids in the little town, no better accommodation could be found than a couple of planks in a cupboard. Next day they took up their quarters in an unpretentious cabaret at La Tour d'Auvergne, one of the villages on the slopes of the mountain, a few miles away.

Here (writes Sir J. Hooker), and for some time afterwards, on our further travels, we had many interesting and amusing experiences of rural life in the wilder parts of central France, its poverty, penury, and too often its inconceivable impositions and overcharges to foreigners, quite consistently with good feeling, politeness, and readiness to assist in many ways.

By the 10th of July, nine days after setting out, I felt satisfied (he continues) that your father was equal to an excursion upon which he had set his heart, to the top of the Pic de Sancy, 4000 feet above La Tour and 7 miles distant.

It was on this occasion that the friends made what they thought a new discovery, namely evidence of glacial action in central France. Besides striated stones in the fields or built into the walls, they noticed the glaciated appearance of one of the valleys descending from the peak, and especially some isolated gigantic masses of rock on an open part of the valley, several miles away, as to which they debated whether they were low buildings or transported blocks. Sir Joseph visited them next day, and found they were the latter, brought down from the upper part of the peak. (He published an account of these blocks in "Nature" 8 31, 166, but subsequently found that glaciation had been observed by von Lassaul in 1872 and by Sir William Guise in 1870.)

Lepuy offered a special attraction apart from scenery and geology. In the museum was the skeleton of a prehistoric man that had been found in the breccia of the neighbourhood, associated with the remains of the rhinoceros, elephant, and other extinct mammals. My father's sketch-book contains drawings of these bones and of the ravine where they were discovered, although in spite of directions from M. Aymard, the curator, he could not find the exact spot. Under the sketch is a description of the remains, in which he notes,] "The bones do not look fresher than some of those of Elephas and Rhinoceros in the same or adjacent cases."

[As for the final stage of the excursion:—

After leaving the Ardeche (continues Sir J. Hooker), with no Scrope to lead or follow, our scientific ardours collapsed. We had vague views as to future travel. Whatever one proposed was unhesitatingly acceded to by the other. A more happy-go-lucky pair of idlers never joined company.

As will be seen from the following letters, they made their way to the Black Forest, where they stayed till Sir Joseph's duties called him back to England, and my mother came out to join my father for the rest of his holiday. (You ask me (Sir Joseph adds) whether your father smoked on the occasion of this tour. Yes, he did, cigars in moderation. But the history of his addiction to tobacco that grew upon him later in life, dates from an earlier excursion that we took together, and I was the initiator of the practice. It happened in this wise; he had been suffering from what was supposed to be gastric irritation, and, being otherwise "run down," we agreed to go, in company with Sir John Lubbock, on a tour to visit the great monoliths of Brittany. This was in 1867. On arriving at Dinan he suffered so much, that I recommended his trying a few cigarettes which I had with me. They acted as a charm, and this led to cigars, and finally, about 1875 I think, to the pipe. That he subsequently carried the use of tobacco to excess is, I think, unquestionable. I repeatedly remonstrated with him, at last I think (by backing his medical adviser) with effect.

I have never blamed myself for the "teaching him" to smoke, for the practice habitually palliated his distressing symptoms when nothing else did, nor can his chronic illness be attributed to the abuse of tobacco.)

The following letters to Sir H. Roscoe and Dr. Tyndall were written during this tour:—]

Le Puy, Haute Loire, France, July 17, 1873.

My dear Roscoe,

Your very kind letter reached me just as I was in the hurry of getting away from England, and I have been carrying it about in my pocket ever since.

Hooker and I have been having a charming time of it among the volcanoes of the Auvergne, and we are now on our way to those of the Velay and Vivarrais. The weather has been almost perfect. Perhaps a few degrees of temperature could have been spared now and then, especially at Clermont, of which somebody once said that having stayed there the climate of hell would have no terrors for him.

It has been warm in the Mont Dore country and in the Cantal, as it is here, but we are very high up, and there is a charming freshness and purity about the air.

I do not expect to be back before the end of September, and my lectures begin somewhere in the second week of October. After they commence I shall not be able to leave London even for a day, but I shall be very glad to come to the inauguration of your new buildings if the ceremony falls within my possible time. And you know I am always glad to be your guest.

I am thriving wonderfully. Indeed all that plagues me now is my conscience, for idling about when I feel full of vigour. But I promised to be obedient, and I am behaving better than Auld Clootie did when he fell sick.

I hope you are routing out the gout. This would be the place for you—any quantity of mineral waters.

Pray remember me very kindly to Mrs. Roscoe, and believe me, ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

Hotel de France, Baden-Baden, July 30, 1873.

My dear Tyndall,

We find ourselves here after a very successful cruise in the Auvergne and Ardeche, successful at least so far as beauty and geological interest go. The heat was killing, and obliged us to give up all notion of going to Ursines, as we had at first intended to do. So we turned our faces north and made for Grenoble, hoping for a breath of cool air from the mountains of Dauphiny. But Grenoble was hotter even than Clermont (which, by the way, quite deserves its reputation as a competitor with hell), a neighbour's drains were adrift close to the hotel, and we got poisoned before we could escape. Luckily we got off with nothing worse than a day or two's diarrhoea. After this the best thing seemed to be to rush northward to Gernsbach, which had been described to me as a sort of earthly paradise. We reached the place last Saturday night, and found ourselves in a big rambling hotel, crammed full of people, and planted in the bottom of a narrow valley, all hot and steaming. A large pigstye "convenient" to the house mingled its vapours with those of the seventy or eighty people who ate and drank without any other earthly occupation that we could discern during the three days we were bound, by stress of letters and dirty linen, to stop. On Monday we made an excursion over here, prospecting, and the air was so fresh and good, and things in general looked so promising that I made up my mind to put up in Baden-Baden until the wife joins me. She writes me that you talk of leaving England on Friday, and I may remark that Baden is on the high road to Switzerland. Verbum sap.

I am wonderfully better, and really feel ashamed of loafing about when I might very well be at work. But I have promised to make holiday, and make holiday I will.

No proof of your answer to Forbes' biographer reached me before I left, so I suppose you had not received one in time. I am dying to see it out.

Hooker is down below, but I take upon myself to send his love. He is in great force now that he has got rid of his Grenoble mulligrubs.

Ever yours,

T.H. Huxley.

[After parting company with Hooker, he paid a flying visit to Professor Bonnet at Geneva; then he was joined by his wife and son for the last three weeks of the holiday, which were spent at Baden and in the Bernese Oberland. Before this, he writes home:—]

I feel quite a different man from what I was two months ago, and you will say that you have a much more creditable husband than the broken-down old fellow who has been a heart-ache to you so long, when you see me. The sooner you can get away the better. If the rest only does you as much good as it does me, I shall be very happy.

Axenstein, Luzerne, August 24, 1873.

My dear Tyndall,

The copies of your booklet ["Principal Forbes and his Biographers."] intended for Hooker and me reached me just as I left Baden last Tuesday. Hooker had left me for home a fortnight before, and I hardly know whether to send his to Kew or keep them for him till I return. I have read mine twice, and I think that nothing could be better than the tone you have adopted. I did not suspect that you had such a shot in your locker as the answer to Forbes about the direction of the "crevasses" referred to by Rendu. It is a deadly thrust; and I shall be curious to see what sort of parry the other side will attempt. For of course they will attempt something. Scotland is, I believe, the only country in the world in which you can bring in action for "putting to silence" an adversary who will go on with an obviously hopeless suit. The lawgivers knew the genius of the people; and it is to be regretted that they could not establish a process of the same sort in scientific matters.

I wrote to you a month ago to tell you how we had been getting on in France. Hooker and I were very jolly, notwithstanding the heat, and I think that the Vivarrais is the most instructive country in the world for seeing what water can do in cutting down the hardest rocks. Scrope's book is very good on the whole, though the pictures are a little overdone.

My wife and Leonard met me at Cologne on the 11th. Then we went on to Baden and rested till last Tuesday, when we journeyed to Luzerne and, getting out of that hot and unsavoury hole as fast as we could, came here last Thursday.

We find ourselves very well off. The hotel is perched up 1800 feet above the lake, with a beautiful view of Pilatus on the west and of the Urner See on the south. On the north we have the Schwyz valley, so that we are not shut in, and the air is very good and fresh. There are plenty of long walks to be had without much fatigue, which suits the wife. Leonard promises to have very good legs of his own with plenty of staying power. I have given him one or two sharp walks, and I find he has plenty of vigour and endurance. But he is not thirteen yet and I do not mean to let him do overmuch, though we are bent on a visit to a glacier. I began to tell him something about the glaciers the other day, but I was promptly shut up with, "Oh, yes! I know all about that. It's in Dr. Tyndall's book."—which said book he seems to me to have got by heart. He is the sweetest little fellow imaginable; and either he has developed immensely in the course of the last year, or I have never been so much thrown together with him alone, and have not had the opportunity of making him out.

You are a fatherly old bachelor, and will not think me a particularly great donkey for prattling on in this way about my swan, who probably to unprejudiced eyes has a power of goose about him.

I suppose you know that in company with yourself and Hooker, the paternal gander (T.H.H.) has been honoured by the King of Sweden and made into a Polar Goose by the order of the North Star. Hooker has explained to the Swedish Ambassador that English officials are prohibited by order in Council from accepting foreign orders, and I believe keeps the cross and ribbon on these conditions. If it were an ordinary decoration I should decline with thanks, but I am told it is a purely scientific and literary affair like the Prussian "pour le merite"; so when I get back I shall follow Hooker's line.

I met Laugel on board the Luzerne steamboat the other day, and he told me that you were at the Belalp—gallivanting as usual, and likely to remain there for some time. So I send this on the chance of finding you.

With best love from us all, ever yours,

T.H. Huxley.

I am as well as I ever was in my life—regularly set up—in token whereof I have shaved off my beard.

[In another letter to his wife, dated August 8, from Baden, there is a very interesting passage about himself and his aims. He has just been speaking about his son's doings at school:—]

I have been having a great deal of talk with myself about my future career too, and I have often thought over what you say in the letter you wrote to the Puy. I don't quite understand what — meant about the disputed reputation, unless it is a reputation for getting into disputes. But to say truth I am not greatly concerned about any reputation except that of being entirely honest and straightforward, and that reputation I think and hope I have.

For the rest...the part I have to play is not to found a new school of thought or to reconcile the antagonisms of the old schools. We are in the midst of a gigantic movement greater than that which preceded and produced the Reformation, and really only the continuation of that movement. But there is nothing new in the ideas which lie at the bottom of the movement, nor is any reconcilement possible between free thought and traditional authority. One or other will have to succumb after a struggle of unknown duration, which will have as side issues vast political and social troubles. I have no more doubt that free thought will win in the long run than I have that I sit here writing to you, or that this free thought will organise itself into a coherent system, embracing human life and the world as one harmonious whole. But this organisation will be the work of generations of men, and those who further it most will be those who teach men to rest in no lie, and to rest in no verbal delusions. I may be able to help a little in this direction—perhaps I may have helped already. For the present, however, I am disposed to draw myself back entirely into my own branch of physical science. There is enough and to spare for me to do in that line, and, for years to come, I do not mean to be tempted out of it.

[Strangely enough, this was the one thing he was destined not to do. Official work multiplied about him. From 1870 to 1884 only two years passed without his serving on one or two Royal Commissions. He was Secretary of the Royal Society from 1871 to 1880, and President from 1883 to his retirement, owing to ill-health, in 1885. He became Dean as well as Professor of Biology in the College of Science, and Inspector of Fisheries. Though he still managed to find some time for anatomical investigations, and would steal a precious hour or half-hour by driving back from the Home Office to his laboratory at South Kensington before returning home to St. John's Wood, the amount of such work as he was able to publish could not be very great.

His most important contributions during this decennium (writes Sir M. Foster) were in part continuations of his former labours, such as the paper and subsequent full memoir on Stagonolepis, which appeared in 1875 and 1877, and papers on the Skull. The facts that he called a communication to the Royal Society, in 1875 (written 1874.), on Amphioxus, a preliminary note, and that a paper read to the Zoological Society in 1876, on Ceratodus Forsteri, was marked Number 1 of the series of Contributions to Morphology, showed that he still had before him the prospect of much anatomical work, to be accomplished when opportunity offered; but, alas! the opportunity which came was small, the preliminary note had no full successor, and Number 1 was only followed, and that after an interval of seven years, by a brief Number 2. A paper "On the Characters of the Pelvis," in the "Proceedings of the Royal Society," in 1879, is full of suggestive thought, but its concluding passages seem to suggest that others, and not he himself, were to carry out the ideas. Most of the papers of this decennium deal with vertebrate morphology, and are more or less connected with his former researches, but in one respect, at least, he broke quite fresh ground. He had chosen the crayfish as one of the lessons for the class in general biology spoken of above, and was thus drawn into an interesting study of crayfishes, by which he was led to a novel and important analysis of the gill plumes as evidence of affinity and separation. He embodied the main results of his studies in a paper to the Zoological Society, and treated the whole subject in a more popular style in a book on the Crayfish. In a somewhat similar way, having taken the dog as an object lesson in mammalian anatomy for his students, he was led to a closer study of that common animal, resulting in papers on that subject to the Zoological Society in 1880, and in two lectures at the Royal Institution in 1880. He had intended so to develop this study of the dog as to make it tell the tale of mammalian morphology; but this purpose, too, remained unaccomplished.

Moreover, though he sent one paper (on Hyperodapedon Gordoni) to the Geological Society as late as 1887, yet the complete breakdown of his health in 1885, which released him from nearly all his official duties, at the same time dulled his ardour for anatomical pursuits. Stooping over his work became an impossibility.