382 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XIX 



remains which have come into my hands by the merest 

 chance. 



Five and twenty years ago, all the world but yourself 

 believed that a vertebrate animal of higher organisation 

 than a fish in the carboniferous rocks never existed. I 

 think the whole story is not a bad comment upon 

 negative evidence. 



Jan. 1, 1865. 



MY DEAR DARWIN I cannot do better than write 

 my first letter of the year to you, if it is only to wish 

 you and yours your fair share (and more than your fair 

 share, if need be) of good for the New Year. The 

 immediate cause of my writing, however, was turning out 

 my pocket and finding therein an unanswered letter of 

 yours containing a scrap on which is a request for a 

 photograph, which I am afraid I overlooked. At least I 

 hope I did, and then my manners won't be so bad. I 

 enclose the latest version of myself. 



I wish I could follow out your suggestion about a 

 book on zoology. (By the way, please to tell Miss Emma 

 that my last book is a book. 1 Marry come up ! Does 

 her ladyship call it a pamphlet 1) 



But I assure you that writing is a perfect pest to 

 me unless I am interested, and not only a bore but a 

 very slow process. I have some popular lectures on 

 Physiology, 2 which have been half done for more than a 

 twelvemonth, and I hate the sight of them because the 

 subject no longer interests me, and my head is full of 

 other matters. 



1 The first volume of his Hunterian Lectures on Comparative 

 Anatomy. A second volume never appeared. Miss Darwin, as 

 her father wrote to Huxley after the delivery of his Working 

 Men's Lectures in 1862, "was reading your Lectures, and ended 

 by saying, 'I wish he would write a book.' I answered, 'he has 

 just written a great book on the skull.' ' I don't call that a book,' 

 she replied, and added, ' I want something that people can read ; 

 he does write so well.' " 



2 See letter of April 22, 1863. 



