392 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XIX 



My reason is that you have done justice neither to 

 yourself nor to your topics, and that if the appendix is 

 printed as it stands, your labour will be in a great measure 

 lost. 



You start subjects enough for half a dozen papers, and 

 partly from the compression thus resulting, and partly 

 from the absence of illustrations, I do not believe there 

 are half a dozen men in Europe who will be able to 

 follow you. Furthermore, though the appendix is 

 relevant enough every line of it to those who have 

 dived deep, as you and I have to any one else it has all 

 the aspects of a string of desultory discussions. As your 

 father confessor, I forbid the publication of the appendix. 

 After having had all this trouble with you I am not going 

 to have you waste your powers for want of a little method, 

 so I tell you. 



What you are to do is this. You are to rewrite the 

 introduction and to say that the present paper is the first 

 of a series on the structure of the vertebrate skull ; that 

 the second will be " On the development of the osseous 

 cranium of the Common Fowl " [and here (if you are 

 good), I will permit you to introduce the episode on 

 cartilage and membrane (illegible)] ; the third will be 

 " On the chief modifications of the cranium observed in 

 the Sauropsida." 



The fourth, "On the mammalian skull." 



The fifth, " On the skull of the Ichthyopsida." 



I will give you two years from this time to execute 

 these five memoirs ; and then if you have stood good- 

 temperedly the amount of badgering and bullying you 

 will get from me whenever you come dutifully to report 

 progress, you shall be left to your own devices in the 

 third year to publish a paper on " The general structure 

 and theory of the vertebrate skull." 



You have a brilliant field before you, and a start such 

 that no one is likely to catch you. Sit deliberately down 

 over against the city, conquer it and make it your own, 



