LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP, vm 



the other pseudomorph, but leave the fundamental mechanism 

 untouched. 



You appear to me to suppose that external conditions modify 

 the machinery, as if by transferring a flour-mill into a forest you 

 could make it into a saw-mill. I am too much of a sceptic to 

 deny the possibility of anything especially as I am now so 

 much occupied with theology but I don't see my way to your 

 conclusion. 



And that is all the more reason why I don't want to stop 

 you from w r orking it out, or rather to make the " one erasure ' : 

 you suggest. For as to stopping you, " ten on me might," as the 

 navvy said to the little special constable who threatened to take 

 him into custody. Ever yours very faithfully, 



T. H. HUXLEY. 



Warmth and sea-fogs here for a variety. 



One more letter may be given from this time at Bourne- 

 mouth a letter to his eldest daughter on the loss of her 

 infant son : 



CASALINI, W. BOURNEMOUTH, March 2, 1886. 



It's very sad to lose your child just when he was beginning 

 to bind himself to you, and I don't know that it is much consola- 

 tion to reflect that the longer he had wound himself up in your 

 heartstrings the worse the tear would have been, which seems 

 to have been inevitable sooner or later. One does not weigh and 

 measure these things while grief is fresh, and in my experience 

 a deep plunge into the waters of sorrow is the hopefullest way of 

 getting through them on to one's daily road of life again. No 

 one can help another very much in these crises of life ; but love 

 and sympathy count for something, and you know, dear child, 

 that you have these in fullest measure from us. 



On coming up to London in April he was very busy, 

 among other things, with a proposal that the Marine Biologi- 

 cal Association, of which he was President, should urge the 

 Government to appoint a scientific adviser to the Fishery 

 Board. A letter of his on this subject had appeared in 

 the Times for March 30. There seemed to him, with his 

 practical experience of official \vork, insuperable objections 

 to the status of such an officer. Above all, he would be a 

 representative of science in name, without any responsibility 

 to the body of scientific men in the country. Some of his 



