134 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. VII 



only decided by their thinking my memoir was too small 

 and short. 



I have been working in all things with a reference to 

 wide views of zoological philosophy, and the report upon 

 the Echinoderms is intended in common with the mem. on 

 the Salpse to explain my views of Individuality among 

 the lower animals views which I mean to illustrate still 

 further and enunciate still more clearly in my book that 

 is to be. 1 They have met with approval from Carpenter, 

 as you will see by the last edition of his Principles of 

 Physiology, and I think that Forbes and some others will 

 be very likely eventually to come round to them, but 

 everything that relates to abstract thought is at a low 

 ebb among the mass of naturalists in this country. 



In the paper upon " Thalassieolla " and in that which 

 I read before the British Association, as also in one upon 

 the organisation of the Rotifera, which I am going to have 

 published in the Microscopical Society's Transactions, I 

 have been driving in a series of wedges into Cuvier's 

 Radiata, and showing how selon moi they ought to be 

 distributed. 



I am every day becoming more and more certain that 

 you were on the right track thirty years ago in your 

 views of the order and symmetry to be traced in the true 

 natural system. 



During the next session I mean to send in a paper to 

 the R.S. upon the " Homologies of the Mollusca," which 

 shall astonish them. I want to get done for the Mollusca 

 what Savigny did for the Articulata, viz. to show how 

 they all Cephalopoda, Gasteropoda, Pteropoda, Hetero- 

 poda, etc. are organised on one type, and how the 

 homologous organs are modified in each. What with 

 this and the book, I shall have enough to do for the next 

 six months. 



You will doubtless ask what is the practical outlook 



1 He lectured on this subject at the Royal Institution in 1852. 



