CHAPTER X 



BIRDS AND REPTILES PROTOPLASM AGNOSTICISM 



[1867-69]. 



Among Huxley's Continental friends Haeckel had long 

 been reckoned, and during 1867, when the family were 

 staying at Swanage, a visit paid by Dr. Anton Dohrn 

 marked the beginning of another warm intimacy of the 

 kind. In a letter to the former (dated July 16, 1867), 

 congratulating him on his betrothal, and one to the latter 

 written (September 22) after the visit to Swanage, we get 

 pleasing glimpses of the home life in which Huxley par- 

 ticularly delighted, and which alone rendered his immense 

 output of work possible. At this time his children were 

 seven in number, the eldest being ten years old. " Go 

 and see the Huxley family at Swanage," was suggested 

 by Dohrn as a completely satisfactory definition of happi- 

 ness (Life, i, p. 291). 



The last course of lectures as Fullerian Professor of 

 Physiology was delivered at the Royal Institution this 

 year, Huxley finding it necessary to give up this part of 

 his woi^k as being in various ways too exacting, and 

 trenching too much upon the time available for original 

 research. The three following memoirs bear date 

 1867:— 



I. " On Two Widely Contrasted Forms of the Human 

 Cranium" (J. Anat. and Physiol., i, 1867, pp. 60-77. 

 Sci. Mem., iii, xi, p. 214). — A detailed comparison is 

 made in this paper between a broad-headed (brachy- 



85 



