1855 INVITED TO SUCCEED FORBES 177 



the following letters to Dr. Frederick Dyster l of 

 Tenby, whose keen inteiest in marine zoology was 

 the starting-point of a warm friendship with the 

 rising naturalist, some fifteen years his junior. He 

 was strongly urged by the younger man to complete 

 and systematise his observations by taking in turn 

 all the species of each genus of annelids found at Tenby, 

 and working them up into a series of little mono- 

 graphs " which would be the best of all possible 

 foundations for a History of the British Annelidse." 



To DR. DYSTER 



Jan. 5, 1855. 



[He begins by confessing "a considerable liberty" he 

 had been taking with Dyster's name, in calling a joint 

 discovery of theirs, which he described in the Edinburgh 

 New Philosophical Journal, Protula Dysteri.] 



Are you very savage ? If so, you must go and take a 

 walk along the sands and see the slant rays of the sunset 

 tipping the rollers as they break on the beach ; that 

 always made even me at peace with all the world, and 

 a fortiori it will you. 



Truly, I wish I had any such source of consolation. 

 Chimney pots are highly injurious to my morals, and my 

 temper is usually in proportion to the extent of my 

 horizon. 



1 It was to Dyster that Huxley owed his introduction in 1854 

 to F. D. Maurice (whose work in educating the people he did his 

 best to help), and later to Charles Kingsley, whom he first met at 

 the end of June 1855, "What Kingsley do you refer to?" he 

 writes on May 6, "Alton Locke Kingsley or Photographic 

 Kingsley ? I shall be right glad to find good men and true any- 

 where, and I will take your bail for any man. But the work must 

 be critically done." 



VOL. I N 



