1866 BRITISH ASSOCIATION 399 



one. I would do it myself only I think I am already 

 sufficiently isolated and unpopular. 



However, whatever you are going to do, I am sure you 

 will speak honestly and well, and I shall come and be 

 assistant bottle-holder. 



I am glad you like the working-men's lectures. I 

 suspect they are about the best things of that line that I 

 have done, and I only wish I had had the sense to 

 anticipate the run they have had here and abroad, and I 

 would have revised them properly. 



As they stand they are terribly in the rough, from a 

 literary point of view. 



No doubt crib-biting, nurse-biting and original sin in 

 general are all strictly deducible from Darwinian 

 principles ; but don't by misadventure run against any 

 academical facts. 



Some whales have all the cerebral vertebrae free now, 

 and every one of them has the full number, seven, 

 whether they are free or fixed. No doubt whales had 

 hind legs once upon a time. If when you come up to 

 town you go to the College of Surgeons, my friend 

 Flower the Conservator (a good man whom you should 

 know) will show you the whalebone whale's thigh bones 

 in the grand skeleton they have recently set up. The 

 legs, to be sure, and the feet are gone, the battle of life 

 having left private Cetacea in the condition of a Chelsea 

 pensioner. Ever yours faithfully, T. H. HUXLEY. 



This year the British Association met at Notting- 

 ham, and Huxley was president of Section D. In 

 this capacity he invited Professor Haeckel to attend 

 the meeting, but the impending war with Austria 

 prevented any Prussian from leaving his country at 

 the time, though Haeckel managed to come over 

 later. 



