1863 HUNTERIAN LECTURES 353 



Did you not some time ago tell me that you considered 

 the Y-shaped bone (so-called presphenoid) in the Pike to 

 be the true basisphenoid ? If so, let me know before 

 lecture to-morrow, that I may not commit theft unawares. 



I have arrived at that conclusion myself from the 

 anatomical relations of the bone in question to the brain 

 and nerves. 



I look upon the proposition opisthotis = turtle's 

 " occipital externe " = Perch's Rocher (Cuvier) as the one 

 thing needful to clear up the unity of structure of the 

 bony cranium ; and it shall be counted unto me as a 

 great sin if I have helped to keep you back from it 

 The thing has been dawning upon me ever since I read 

 Kolliker's book two summers ago, but I have never had 

 time to work it out. Ever yours faithfully, 



T. H. HUXLEY. 



The following extracts from a letter to Hooker 

 and a letter to Darwin describe the pressure of his 

 work at this time. 



1863. 



MY DEAR HOOKER ... I would willingly send a 

 paper to the Linnean this year if I could, but I do not 

 see how it is practicable. I lecture five times a week 

 from now till the middle of February. I then have to 

 give eighteen lectures at the Coll. Surgeons six on 

 classification, and twelve on the vertebrate skeleton. I 

 must write a paper on this great new Glyptodon, with 

 some eighteen to twenty plates. A preliminary notice 

 has already gone to the Royal Society. I have a decade 

 of fossil fish in progress ; a fellow in the country will 

 keep on sending me splendid new Labyrinthodons from 

 the coal, and that d d manual must come out. Ayez 

 pitti de moi. T. H. H. 



JERMYN STREET, July 2, 1863. 



MY DEAR DARWIN I am horribly loth to say that I 

 cannot do anything you want done ; and partly for that 

 VOL. I 2 A 



