396 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY cHAP, 



January 16. — At lunch he spoke of Dr. Louis 

 Eobinson's experiments upon simian characteristics 

 in new-born children. He himself had called attention 

 before to the incurved feet of infants, but the power 

 of hanging by the hands was a new and important 

 discovery.^ 



He expressed his disgust with a certain member 

 of the Psychical Research Society for his attitude 

 towards spiritualism : " He doesn't believe in it, yet 

 lends it the cover of his name. He is one of the 

 people who talk of the ' possibility ' of the thing, who 

 think the difficulties of disproving a thing as good as 

 direct evidence in its favour." 



He thought it hard to be attacked for "the con- 

 tempt of the man of science " when he was dragged 

 into debate by Mr. Andrew Lang's Cock Lane and 

 Common Sense, he saying in a very polite letter: 

 " I am content to leave Mr. Lang the Cock Lane 

 Ghost if I may keep common sense." " After all," 

 he added, " when a man has been through life and 

 made his judgments, he must have come to a decision 

 that there are some subjects it is not worth while 

 going into." 



January 18. — I referred to an article in the last 

 Nineteenth Century, and he said : — "As soon as I saw 

 it, I wrote, ' Knowles, my friend, you don't draw me 



^ Professor H. F. Osborn tells this storj^ of his : — "When a fond 

 mother calls upon me to admire her baby, I never fail to respond ; 

 and while cooing appropriately, I take advantage of an opportunity 

 to gently ascertain whether the soles of its feet turn in, and tend 

 to support my theory of arboreal descent." 



