1877 HONORARY DEGREE FOR DARWIN 227 



We are to sit again in the end of July when Mrs. 

 Skelton and you, if you are wise, will be making holiday. 



Your invitation is most tempting, and if I had no 

 work to do I should jump at it. 



But alas ! I shall have a deal of work, and I must 

 go to my Patmos in George Street. Ingrained laziness 

 is the bane of my existence ; and you don't suppose that 

 with the sun shining down into your bosky dell, and 

 Mrs. Skelton radiant, and Froude and yourself nicotiant, 

 I am such a Philistine as to do a stroke of work ? Ever 

 yours very faithfully, 



T. H. HUXLEY. 



From Edinburgh he went to St. Andrews to make 

 arrangements for his elder son to go to the University 

 there as a student the following winter. Then he 

 paid a visit to Sir W. Armstrong in Northumberland, 

 afterwards spending a month at Whitby. His holiday 

 work consisted in a great part of the article on 

 " Evolution " for the Encyclopedia Britannica, which 

 is noted as finished on October 24, though not 

 published till the next year. 



In November the honorary degree of LL.D. was 

 conferred upon Charles Darwin at Cambridge, "a 

 great step for Cambridge, though it may not seem 

 much in itself," he writes to Dohrn, November 21. 

 In the evening after the public ceremony there was 

 a dinner of the Philosophical Club, at which he spoke 

 in praise of Darwin's services to science. Darwin 

 himself was unable to be present, but received an 

 enthusiastic account of the proceedings from his son, 

 and wrote to thank Huxley, who replied : 



