354 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XVII 



reason and partly because we have been very busy here 

 with some new arrangements during the last day or two, 

 I did not at once reply to your note. 



I am afraid, however, I cannot undertake any sort of 

 new work. In spite of working like a horse (or if you 

 prefer it, like an ass), I find myself scandalously in arrear, 

 and I shall get into terrible hot water if I do not clear off 

 some things that have been hanging about me for 

 months and years. 



If you will send me up the specimens, however, I will 

 ask Flower (whom I see constantly) to examine them for 

 you. The examination will be no great trouble, and I 

 am ashamed to make a fuss about it, but I have sworn a 

 big oath to take no fresh work, great or small, until 

 certain things are done. 



I wake up in the morning with somebody saying in 

 my ear, " A is not done, and B is not done, and C is not 

 done, and D is not done," etc., and a feeling like a fellow 

 whose duns are all in the street waiting for him. By the 

 way, you ask me what I am doing now, so I will just 

 enumerate some of the A, B, and C's aforesaid. 



A. Editing lectures on Vertebrate skull and bringing 

 them out in the Medical Times. 



B. Editing and re-writing lectures on Elementary 

 Physiology, 1 just delivered here and reported as I went 

 along. 



C. Thinking of my course of twenty-four lectures on 

 the Mammalia at Coll. Surgeons in next spring, and 

 making investigations bearing on the same. 



D. Thinking of and working at a Manual of Compara- 



1 Delivered on Friday evenings from April to June at Jermyu 

 Street, and reported in the Medical Times. They formed the 

 basis of his well-known little book on Elementary Physiology, 

 published 1866. He writes on April 22 : "Macmillan has just 

 been with me, and I am let in for a school book on physiology 

 based on these lectures of mine. Money arrangements not quite 

 fixed yet, but he is a good fellow, and will not do me un- 

 necessarily." 



