200 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP, xn 



worth a second go. I took a vast of trouble (as the country folks 

 say) about it. I am afraid it has made Spencer very angry 

 but he knows I think he has been doing mischief this long time. 



Bellows to mend ! Bellows to mend ! I am getting very 

 tired of it. If I walk two or three miles, however slowly, I am 

 regularly done for at the end of it. I expect there has been 

 more mischief than I thought for. 



How about the Bill ? Ever yours, T. H. HUXLEY. 



However, he and Mr. Spencer wrote their minds to each 

 other on the subject, and as Huxley remarks with reference 

 to this occasion, " the process does us both good, and in no 

 way interferes with our friendship." 



The letter immediately following, to Mr. Romanes, 

 answers an enquiry about a passage quoted from Huxley's 

 writings by Professor Schurman in his Ethical Import of 

 Darwinism. This passage, made up of sentences from two 

 different essays, runs as follows : 



It is quite conceivable that every species tends to produce 

 varieties of a limited number and kind, and that the effect of 

 natural selection is to favour the development of some of these, 

 while it opposes the development of others along their prede- 

 termined line of modification.* A whale does not tend to vary 

 in the direction of producing feathers, nor a bird in the direction 

 of producing whalebone.f 



" On the strength of these extracts " (writes Mr. Romanes), 

 " Schurman represents you ' to presuppose design, since develop- 

 ment takes place along certain predetermined lines of modifica- 

 tion.' But as he does not give references, and as I do not remem- 

 ber the passages, I cannot consult the context, which I fancy 

 must give a different colouring to the extracts." 



4 MARLBOROUGH PLACE, Jan. 5, iSSS. 



MY DEAR ROMANES They say that liars ought to have long 

 memories. I am sure authors ought to. I could not at first 

 remember where the passage Schurman quotes occurs, but I 

 did find it in the Encyclopedia Britannica article on ' Evolu- 

 tion," * reprinted in Science and Culture, p. 307. 



But I do not find anything about the " whale " here. Never- 



* Coll. Ess. ii. 223. 



f In " Mr. Darwin's Critics," 1871 ; Coll. Ess. ii. 181. 



