1866 ANTHROPOLOGICAL SCHEME 395 



Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal ; anything Huxley 

 could say in its favour would be of great weight. 

 Would he come out as Dr. Fayrer's guest ? 



Unable to go to Calcutta, he sent the following 

 letter : 



JERMYN STREET, LONDON, June 14, 1866. 



MY DEAR FAYRER I lose no time in replying to your 

 second letter, and my first business is to apologise for 

 not having answered the first, but it reached me in the 

 thick of my lectures, and like a great many other things 

 which ought to have been done I put off replying to a 

 more convenient season. I have been terribly hard 

 worked this year, and thought I was going to break 

 down a few weeks ago but luckily I have pulled through. 



I heartily wish that there were the smallest chance 

 of my being able to accept your kind invitation and take 

 part in your great scheme at Calcutta. But it is im- 

 possible for me to leave England for more than six weeks 

 or two months, and that only in the autumn, a time of 

 year when I imagine Calcutta is not likely to be the 

 scene of anything but cholera patients. 



As to your plan itself, I think it a most grand and 

 useful one if it can be properly carried out. But you 

 do things on so grand a scale in India that I suppose 

 all the practical difficulties which suggest themselves to 

 me may be overcome. 



It strikes me that it will not do to be content with 

 a single representative of each tribe. At least four or 

 five will be needed to eliminate the chances of accident, 

 and even then much will depend upon the discretion and 

 judgment of the local agent who makes the suggestion. 

 This difficulty, however, applies chiefly if not solely to 

 physical ethnology. To the philologer the opportunities 

 for comparing dialects and checking pronunciation will 

 be splendid, however [few] the individual speakers of 



