134 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY cHAP. VI 



orchids on that tack ? Orchids at any rate can't try to 

 improve themselves in taking shots at insects' heads with 

 pollen bags — as Lamarck's Giraffes tried to stretch their 

 necks ! 



Balfour's ballon d'essai ^ (I do not believe it could have 

 been anything more) is the only big blunder he has made, 

 and it passes my comprehension why he should have 

 made it. But he seems to have dropped it again like the 

 proverbial hot potato. If he had not, he would have 

 hopelessly destroyed the Unionist party. — Ever yours, 



T. H. Huxley. 



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'■ I. e. toueliing a proposed Roman Catholic University for Ireland, 



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At the end of the year he thanks Lord Tennyson 



for his gift of "Demeter." 



Dec. 26, 1889. 



My dear Tennyson — Accept my best thanks for 

 your very kind present of " Demeter." I have not had a 9 

 Christmas Box I valued so much for many a long year. 

 I envy yoiir vigour, and am ashamed of myself beside 

 you for being turned out to grass. I kick up my heels 

 now and then, and have a gallop round the paddock, but 

 it does not come to much. 



With best wishes to you, and, if Lady Tennyson has 

 not forgotten me altogether, to her also — Believe me, 

 yours very faithfully, T. H. Huxley. 



A discussion in the Times this autumn, in which 

 he joined, was of unexpected moment to him, inas- 

 much as it was the starting-point for no fewer than 

 four essays in political philosophy, which appeared 

 the following year in the Nineteenth Century. 



The correspondence referred to arose out of the 

 heckling of Mr. John Morley by one of his constituents 

 at Newcastle in November 1889. The heckler 



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