230 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XII 



Wallace's impetus seems to have set Darwin going in 

 earnest, and I am rejoiced to hear we shall learn his 

 views in full, at last. I look forward to a great revolution 

 being effected. Depend upon it, in natural history, as 

 in everything else, when the English mind fully determines 

 to work a thing out, it will do it better than any other. 



I firmly believe in the advent of an English epoch in 

 science and art, which will lick the. Augustan (which, by 

 the bye, had neither science nor art in our sense, but you 

 know what I mean) into fits. So hooray, in the first 

 place, for the Genera plantarum. I can quite understand 

 the need of a new one, and I am right glad you have 

 undertaken it It seems to me to be in all respects the 

 sort of work for you, and exactly adapted to your 

 environment at Kew. I remember you mentioned to me 

 some time ago that you were thinking of it. 



I wish I could even hope that such a thing would be 

 even attempted in the course of this generation for 

 animals. 



But with animal morphology in the state in which it 

 is now, we have no terminology that will stand, and 

 consequently concise and comparable definitions are in 

 many cases impossible. 



If ol5 Dom. Gray l were but an intelligent activity 

 instead of being a sort of zoological whirlwind, what a 

 deal he might do. And I am hopeless of Owen's compre- 

 hending what classification means since the publication 

 of the wonderful scheme which adorns the last edition of 

 his lectures. 



As you say, I have found this a great place for " work 

 of price." I have finished the " Oceanic Hydrozoa " all 

 but the bookwork, for which I must have access to the 

 B.M. Library but another week will do him. My notes 

 are from eight to twelve years old, and really I often have 

 felt like the editor of somebody else's posthumous work. 



1 John Edward Gray, 1800-1875, appointed Keeper of the 

 Zoological Collections in the British Museum in 1840. 



