94 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. IV 



on which the examination was to be based. He 

 replies to some proposed changes in a letter to Sir 

 M, Foster of December 1 2 : — 



I am very sorry I cannot agree with your clients 

 aVtout the examination. They should recollect the late 

 Master of Trinity's aphorism that even the youngest of 

 us is not infallible. 



I know exactly upon what principles I am going, and 

 so far as I am at present informed that advantage is 

 peculiar to my side. Two points I am quite clear about — 

 one is the exclusion of Amphioxus, and the other the 

 retention of so much of the Bird as will necessitate a know- 

 ledge of Sauropsidan skeletal characters and the elements 

 of skeletal homologies in skull and limbs. 



I have taken a good deal of pains over drawing up a 

 new syllabus — including dogfish — and making room for it 

 by excluding Amphioxus and all of bird except skeleton. 

 I have added Lamprey (cranial and spinal skeleton, not 

 face cartilages), so that the intelligent student may know 

 what a notochord means before he goes to embryology 

 I have excluded Distoma and kept Helix. 



The Committee must now settle the matter. I have 

 done with it. 



On December 27 he writes — 



I have been thinking over the Examinership business 

 without coming to any very satisfactory result The 

 present state of things is not satisfactory so far as I am 

 concerned. I do not like to appear to be doing what I 

 am not doing. 



would of course be the successor indicated, if he 



had not so carefully cut his own thi-oat as an Examiner. 

 . . . He would be bringing an action against the Lord 

 President before he had been three years in office ! . . . 

 As I told Forster, when he was Vice-President, the whole 

 value of the Exr. system depends on the way the 



