12 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. I 



would own you, if he could return to expound his own 

 epistles. 



1 am glad you like my Descartes article. My business 

 with my scientific friends is something like yours with 

 the Puritans, nature being our Paul. Ever yours very 

 faithfully, T. H. HUXLEY. 



26 ABBEY PLACE, May 10, 1870. 



From the 14th to the 24th of April Huxley, 

 accompanied by his friend Hooker, .made a trip to 

 the Eifel country. His sketch-book is full of rapid 

 sketches of the country, many of them geological; 

 one day indeed there are eight, another nine such. 



Tyndall was invited to join the party, and at first 

 accepted, but then recollected the preliminaries which 

 had to be carried out before his lectures on electricity 

 at the end of the month. So he writes on April 6 : 



ROYAL INSTITUTION, 6 April. 



MY DEAR HUXLEY I was rendered drunk by the 

 excess of prospective pleasure when you mentioned the 

 Eifel yesterday, and took no account of my lectures. They 

 begin on the 28th, and I have studiously to this hour 

 excluded them from my thought. I have made arrange- 

 ments to see various experiments involving the practical 

 application of electricity before the lectures begin ; I find 

 myself, in short, cut off from the expedition. My regret 

 on this score is commensurable with the pleasures I 

 promised myself. Confound the lectures ! 



And yours * on Friday is creating a pretty hubbub 

 already. I am torn to pieces by women in search of 



1 On, the Pedigree of tJie Horse, April 8, 1870, which was never 

 brought out in book form. 



