1892 LETTERS 265 



find yourself in a legal quagmire. Builders, as a rule, are 

 on a level with horse-dealers in point of honesty — I could 

 tell you some pretty stories from my small experience of 

 them. 



The next, to Lord Farrer, is apropos of quite an 

 extensive correspondence in the Times as to the correct 

 reading of the well-known lines about the missionary 

 and the cassowary, to which both Huxley and Lord 

 Farrer had contributed their own reminiscences. 



HoDESLEA, Oct. 15, 1892. 

 My dear Farrer — 



If you were a missionary 



In the heat of Timbuctoo 



You 'd wear nought but a nice and airy 



Pair of bands — p'raps cassock too. 



Don't you see the fine touch of local colour in my 

 version ! Is it not obvious to everybody who understands 

 the methods of high a 'priori criticism that this considera- 

 tion entirely outweighs the merely emj^irical fact that 

 your version dates back to 1837 — which I must admit is 

 before my adolescence ? It is obvious to the meanest 

 capacity that mine must be the original text in " Idee," 

 whatever your wretched " Wirklichkeit " may have to say 

 to the matter. 



And where, I should like to know, is a glimmer of a 

 scintilla of a hint that the missionary was a dissenter 1 

 I claim him for my dear National Church. — Ever yours, 



T. H. Huxley. 



The folio win 2; is about a document which he had 

 forgotten that he wrote : — 



