1874 LETTERS TO DARWIN 143 



he tells me he has written to you. I suspect he has been 

 very ill. 



Let us know when you are in town, and believe me 

 Ever yours very faithfully, T. H. HUXLEY. 



The allusion in the letter of March 31 to certain 

 " spirit photographs " refers to a series of these 

 wonderful productions sent to him by a connection 

 of Mr. Darwin's, who was interested in these matters, 

 and to whom he replied, showing how the effect 

 might have been produced by simple mechanical 

 means. 



It was at this gentleman's house that in January 

 a carefully organised stance was held, at which my 

 father was present incognito, so far as the medium 

 was concerned, and on which he wrote the following 

 report to Mr. Darwin, referred to in his Life, voL 

 iii. p. 187. 



It must be noted that he had had fairly extensive 

 experience of spiritualism ; he had made regular 

 experiments with Mrs. Haydon at his brother George's 

 house (the paper on which these are recorded is 

 undated, but it must have been before 1863) ; he 

 was referred to as a disbeliever in an article in the 

 Pall Mall Gazette during January 1869, as a sequel 

 to which a correspondent sent him an account of the 

 confessions of the Fox girls, who had started spiritual- 

 ism forty years before. At the houses of other friends, 

 he had attended seances and met mediums, by whom 

 he was most unfavourably impressed. 



Moreover, when invited to join a committee of 



