312 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XVI 



six years had I accepted an appointment to the Rattle- 

 snake offered me by Captain Stanley, which, but for my 

 having arranged for a journey to India, might have been 

 accepted. 



Returning to the purpose of our interview, the re- 

 searches Mr. Huxley laid before me were chiefly those 

 on the Salpae, a much misunderstood group of marine 

 Hydrozoa. Of these I had amused myself with making 

 drawings during the long and often weary months passed 

 at sea on board the Erebus, but having other subjects to 

 attend to, I had made no further study of them than as 

 consumers of the vegetable life (Diatoms) of the Antarctic 

 Ocean. Hence his observations on their life -history, 

 habits, and affinities were on almost all points a revelation 

 to me, and I could not fail to recognise in their author 

 all the qualities possessed by a naturalist of commanding 

 ability, industry, and power of exposition. Our inter- 

 views, thus commenced, soon ripened into a friendship, 

 which led to an arrangement for a monthly meeting, and 

 in the informal establishment of a club of nine, the other 

 members of which were, Mr. Busk, Dr. Frankland, Mr. 

 Hirst, Sir J. Lubbock, Mr. Herbert Spencer, Dr. Tyndall, 

 and Mr. Spottiswoode. 



Just a month after this letter to his friend, the 

 same year which had first brought Huxley public 

 recognition outside his special sphere brought him 

 also the greatest sorrow perhaps of his whole life. I 

 have already spoken of the sudden death of the little 

 son in whom so much of his own and his wife's 

 happiness was centred. The suddenness of the blow 

 made it all the more crushing, and the mental strain, 

 intensified by the sight of his wife's inconsolable 

 grief, brought him perilously near a complete break- 

 down. But the birth of another son, on December 



