1862 EDINBURGH LECTURES ON MAN 283 



in existence, and expressed my belief that the one gap 

 in the evidence would be filled up, as I always do. 

 Ever yours faithfully, T. H. HUXLEY. 



JERMYN STIIEET, January 20, 1862. 



MY DEAR DARWIN The enclosed article, which has been 

 followed up by another more violent, more scurrilously 

 personal, and more foolish, will prove to you that my 

 labour has not been in vain, and that your views and 

 mine are likely to be better ventilated in Scotland than 

 they have been. 



I was quite uneasy at getting no attack from the 

 Witness, thinking I must have overestimated the impres- 

 sion I had mide, and the favourableness of the reception 

 of what I said. But the raving of the Witness is clear 

 testimony that my notion was correct. 



I shall send a short reply to the Scotsman for the 

 purpose of further advertising the question. 



With regard to what are especially your doctrines, I 

 spoke much more favourably than I am reported to have 

 done. I expressed no doubt as to their ultimate establish- 

 ment, but as I particularly wished not to be misrepresented 

 as an advocate trying to soften or explain away real 

 difficulties, I did not in speaking enter into the details 

 of what is to be said in diminishing the weight of the 

 hybrid difficulty. All this will be put fully when I 

 print the Lecture. 



The arguments put in your letter are those which I 

 have urged to other people of the opposite side over 

 and over again. I have told my students that I entertain 

 no doubt that twenty years' experiments on pigeons 

 conducted by a skilled physiologist, instead of by a 

 mere breeder, would give us physiological species sterile 

 inter se, from a common stock (and in this, if I mistake 

 not, I go further than you do yourself), and I have 

 told them that when these experiments have been 

 performed I shall consider your views to have a complete 



