48 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. Ill 



are unquestionably false, I must confess I feel greatly 

 inclined to disbelieve his other assertions. 



March 29. We sail hence on Sunday for the Cape, 

 so I will finish up. If you have not already written to 

 me at that place, direct your letters to H.M.S. Rattlesnake, 

 Sydney (to wait arrival). We shall probably be at the 

 Cape some weeks surveying, thence shall betake ourselves 

 to the Mauritius, and leave a card on Paul and Virginia, 

 thence on to Sydney ; but it is of no use to direct to any 

 place but the last. 



P.S. The Rattlesnakes are not idle. We shall most 

 likely have something to say to the English savans before 

 long. If I have any friz in the fire I will let you know. 



He gives a fuller account of this forthcoming work 

 in a letter to his sister, dated Sydney, August 1, 

 1847. The two papers in question, as appears from 

 the briefest notice in the Proceedings of the Linnean 

 Society, ascribing them to William (!) Huxley, were 

 read in 1849 : 



In my last letter I think I mentioned to you that I 

 had worked out and sent home to the President of the 

 Linnsean Soc., through Capt. Stanley, an account of 

 Physalia, or Portuguese man-of-war as it is called, an 

 animal whose structure and affinities had never been 

 properly worked out. The careful investigation I made 

 gave rise to several new ideas covering the whole class of 

 animals to which this creature belongs, and these ideas I 

 have had the good fortune to have had many oppor- 

 tunities of working out in the course of our subsequent 

 wanderings, so that I am provided with materials for a 

 second paper far more considerable in extent, and 

 embracing an altogether wider field. This second paper 

 is now partly in esse that is, written out and partly 

 in posse that is, in my head ; but I shall send it before 



