1859-1863] HUXLEY'S LECTURES 231 



man ! Do show your section to Ramsay, and tell him what Letter 156 

 I say ; and if he thinks it a fair section for a beginner I am 

 shut up, and " will for ever hold my tongue." Good-night. 



To T. H. Huxley. Letter 157 



Down, [Jan.] loth [1863]. 



You will be weary of notes from me about the little 

 book of yours. It is lucky for me that I expressed, before 

 reading No. VI., 1 my opinion of its absolute excellence, 

 and of its being well worth wide distribution and worth 

 correction (not that I see where you could improve), if 

 you thought it worth your valuable time. Had I read 

 No. VI., even a rudiment of modesty would, or ought to, 

 have stopped me saying so much. Though I have been well 

 abused, yet I have had so much praise, that I have become 

 a gourmand, both as to capacity and taste ; and I really 

 did not think that mortal man could have tickled my 

 palate in the exquisite manner with which you have done the 

 job. So I am an old ass, and nothing more need be said 

 about this. I agree entirely with all your reservations about 

 accepting the doctrine, and you might have gone further 

 with further safety and truth. Of course I do not wholly 

 agree about sterility. I hate beyond all things finding 

 myself in disagreement with any capable judge, when the 

 premises are the same ; and yet this will occasionally happen. 

 Thinking over my former letter to you, I fancied (but I now 

 doubt) that I had partly found out the cause of our disagree- 

 ment, and I attributed it to your naturally thinking most about 

 animals, with which the sterility of the hybrids is much more 

 conspicuous than the lessened fertility of the first cross. 

 Indeed, this could hardly be ascertained with mammals, 

 except by comparing the products of [their] whole life ; and, 

 as far as I know, this has only been ascertained in the case of 

 the horse and ass, which do produce fewer offspring in [their] 

 lifetime than in pure breeding. In plants the test of first cross 

 seems as fair as test of sterility of hybrids. And this latter 

 test applies, I will maintain to the death, to the crossing of 

 varieties of Verbascum, and varieties, selected varieties, of Zea? 



1 Lectures to Working RIen, No. VI., is a critical examination of the 

 position of the Origin of Species in relation to the complete theory of 

 the "causes of the phenomena of organic nature." 



2 See Letter 156. 



