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January 1, 1865
My dear Darwin–I cannot do better than write my first letter of the year to you, if it is only to wish you and yours your fair share (and more than your fair share, if need be) of good for the New Year. The immediate cause of my writing, however, was turning out my pocket and finding therein an unanswered letter of yours containing a scrap on which is a request for a photograph, which I'am afraid I overlooked. At least I hope I did, and then my manners won't be so bad. I enclose the latest version of myself.
I wish I could follow out your suggestion about a book on zoology. (By the way please to tell Miss Emma that my last book is a book. [The first volume of his Hunterian Lectures on Comparative Anatomy. A second volume never appeared. Miss Darwin, as her father wrote to Huxley after the delivery of his Working Men's Lectures in 1862, "was reading your Lectures, and ended by saying, 'I wish he would write a book.' I answered, 'he has just written a great book on the skull.' 'I don't call that a book,' she replied, and added, 'I want something that people can read; he does write so well.'"] Marry come up I Does her ladyship call it a pamphlet ?)
But I assure you that writing is a perfect pest to me unless I am interested, and not only a bore but a very slow process. I have some popular lectures on Physiology, which have been half done for more than a twelvemonth, and I hate the sight of them because the subject no longer interests me, and my head is full of other matters.
So I have just done giving a set of lectures to working-men on "The Various Races of Mankind," which really would make a book in Miss Emma's sense of the word, and which I have had reported. But when am I to work them up? Twenty- four Hunterian Lectures loom between me and Easter. I am dying to get out the second volume of the book that is not a book, but in vain.
I trust you are better, though the last news I had of you from Lubbock was not so encouraging as I could have wished.
With best wishes and remembrances to Mrs. Darwin–Ever yours, T. H. Huxley.
Thanks for " fin Darwin," I had it.
26 Abbey Place
My dear Darwin–Many thanks for Deslongchamps paper which I do not possess.
I received another important publication yesterday morning in the shape of a small but hearty son, who came to light a little before six. The wife is getting on capitally, and we are both greatly rejoiced at having another boy, as your godson ran great risks of being spoiled by a harem of sisters.
The leader in the Reader is mine, and I am glad you like it .The more so as it has got me into trouble with some of my friends. However, the revolution that is going on is not to be made with rose-water.
I wish lf anything occurs to you that would improve the scientific part of the Reader, you would let me know as I am in great measure responsible for it.
I am sorry not to have a better account of your health. With kind remembrances to Mrs. Darwin and the rest of your circle–Ever yours faithfully, T. H. Huxley.
26 Abbey Place
My dear Darwin–Many thanks for Deslongchamps' paper which I do not possess.
I received another important publication yesterday morning in the shape of a small but hearty son, who came to light a little before six. The wife is getting on capitally, and we are both greatly rejoiced at having another boy, as your godson ran great risks of being spoiled by a harem of sisters.
The leader in the Reader is mine, and I am glad you like it. The more so as it has got me into trouble with some of my friends. However, the revolution that is going on is not to be made with rose-water.
I wish if anything occurs to you that would improve the scientific part of the Reader, you would let me know as I am in great measure responsible for it.
I am sorry not to have a better account of your health. With kind remembrances to Mrs. Darwin and the rest of your circle–Ever yours faithfully,
T. H. Huxley.
Jermyn Street
My dear Darwin–I meant to have written to you yesterday to say how glad I shall be to read whatever you like to send me.
I have to lecture at the Royal Institution this week, but after Friday, my time will be more at my disposal than usual; and as always I shall be most particularly glad to be of any use to you.
Any glimmer of light on the question you speak of is of the utmost importance, and I shall be immensely interested in learning your views. And of course I need not add I will do my best to upset them. That is the nature of the beast.
I had a letter from one of the ablest of the young zoologists of Germany, Haeckel, the other day, in which this passage occurs:–
"The Darwinian Theory, the establishment and development of which is the object [of] all my scientific labours, has gained ground immensely in Germany (where it was at first so misunderstood) during the last two years, and I entertain no doubt that it will before long be everywhere victorious." And he adds that I dealt far too mildly with Kölliker.
With kindest remembrances to Mrs. Darwin and your family.–Ever yours faithfully,
T. H. Huxley.
Jermyn Street
My dear Darwin–Your MS. [Of Pangenesis] reached me safely last evening.
I could not refrain from glancing over it on the spot, and I perceive I shall have to put on my sharpest spectacles and best considering cap.
I shall not write till I have thought well on the whole subject.–Ever yours, T. H. Huxley.
Jermyn Street
My dear Darwin–I have just counted the pages of your MS. to see that they are all right, and packed it up to send you by post, registered, so I hope it will reach you safely. I should have sent it yesterday, but people came in and bothered me about post time.
I did not at all mean by what I said to stop you from publishing your views, and I really should not like to take that responsibility. Somebody rummaging among your papers half a century hence will find Pangenesis and say, "See this wonderful anticipation of our modern theories, and that stupid ass Huxley preventing his publishing them." And then the Carlyleans of that day will make me a text for holding forth upon the difference between mere vulpine sharpness and genius.
I am not going to be made a horrid example of in that way. But all I say is, publish your views, not so much in the shape of formed conclusions, as of hypothetical developments of the only clue at present accessible, and don't give the Philistines more chances of blaspheming than you can help.
I am very grieved to hear that you have been so ill again.–Ever yours faithfully, T. H. Huxley.
My dear Sir Charles–I returned last night from a hasty journey to Ireland, whither I betook myself on Thursday night, being attracted vulture-wise by the scent of a quantity of carboniferous corpses. The journey was as well worth the trouble as any I ever undertook, seeing that in a morning's work I turned out ten genera of vertebrate animals of which five are certainly new; and of these four are Labyrinthodonts, amphibia of new types. These four are baptised Ophiderpeton, Lepterpeton, Ichthyerpeton, Keraterpeton. They have ossified spinal columns and limbs. The special interest atttaching to the two first is that they represent a type of Labyrinthodonts hitherto unknown, and corresponding with Siren and Amphiuma among living Amphbia. Ophiderpeton, for example, is like an eel, about three feet long with small fore legs and rudimentary hind ones.
In the year of grace 1861, there were three genera of European carboniferous Labyrinthodonts known, Archegosaurus, Scleroceplus, Parabatrachus.
The vertebral column of Archegosaurus was alone known, and it was in a remarkably imperfect state of ossification. Since that date, by a succession of odd chances, seven new genera have come into my hands, and of these six certainly have well-ossified and developed vertebral columns.
I reckon there are now about thirty genera of Labyrinthodonts known from all parts of the world and all deposits. Of these eleven have been established by myself in the course of the last half-dozen years, upon remains which have come into my hands by the merest chance.
Five and twenty years ago, all the world but yourself believed that a vertebrate animal of higher organisation than a fish in the carboniferous rocks never existed. I think the whole story is not a bad comment upon negative evidence.
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