x Introduction 



zoological researches have never been conducted during 

 any voyage of discovery in the southern hemisphere. The 

 course you have taken of directing your attention mainly 

 to impreservable creatures, and to those orders of the 

 animal kingdom respecting which we have least informa- 

 tion, and the care and skill with which you have conducted 

 elaborate dissections and microscopic examinations of the 

 curious creatures you were so fortunate as to meet with, 

 necessarily gives a peculiar and unique character to your 

 researches, since thereby they fill up gaps in our knowledge 

 of the animal kingdom. This is more important, since 

 such researches have been almost always neglected during 

 voyages of discovery." 



But Huxley's cruise in Australian waters had another 

 result. Three weeks after his return to England, he 

 wrote to his sister, Mrs. J. G. Scott, who was then living 

 in Nashville, Tennessee: " I have a woman's element in me. 

 I hate the incessant struggle and toil to cut one an- 

 other's throat among us men, and I long to be able to meet 

 with some one in whom I can place implicit confidence, 

 whose judgment I can respect, and yet who will not laugh 

 at my most foolish weaknesses, and in whose love I can 

 forget all care. All these conditions I have fulfilled in 

 Nettie. With a strong natural intelligence, and knowl- 

 edge enough to understand and sympathize with my aims, 

 with the firmness of a man when necessary, she combines 

 the gentleness of a very woman and the honest simplicity 

 of a child, and then she loves me well, as well as I love 

 her, and you know I love but few in the real meaning of 

 the word, perhaps, but two she and you . . . The 

 worst of it is I have no ambition, except as means to an 

 end, and that end is the possession of a sufficient income 

 to marry upon. I assure you I would not give two straws 

 for all the honors and titles in the world. A worker I 



