10 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY chap, i 



I cannot doubt that your work will have a great success not 

 only in the grosser, but the better sense of the word. — I am 

 yours very faithfully, T. H. Huxley. 



The winter of 1879-80 was memorable for its prolonged 

 spell of cold weather. One result of this may be traced in 

 a Xew Year's letter from Huxley to his eldest daughter. 

 " I have had a capital holiday — mostly in bed — but I don't 

 feel so grateful for it as I might do." To be forced to avoid 

 the many interruptions and distractions of his life in London, 

 which claimed the greater part of his time, he would regard 

 as an unmixed blessing; as he once said feelingly to Pro- 

 fessor Marsh, "HI could only break my leg, what a lot of 

 scientific work I could do ! " But he was less grateful for 

 having entire inaction forced upon him. 



However, he was soon about again, and wrote as follows 

 in answer to a letter from Sir Thomas (afterwards Lord) 

 Farrer, which called his attention, as an old Fishery Com- 

 missioner, to a recent report on the sea-fisheries. 



4 Marlborough Place, Jan. 9, 1880. 



My dear Farrer — I shall be delighted to take a dive into the 

 unfathomable depths of official folly; but your promised docu- 

 ment has not reached me. 



Your astonishment at the tenacity of life of fallacies, permit 

 me to say, is shockingly unphysiological. They, like other low 

 organisms, are independent of brains, and only wriggle the more, 

 the more they are smitten on the place where the brains ought 

 to be — I don't know B., but I am convinced that A. has nothing 

 but a spinal cord, devoid of any cerebral development. Would 

 Mr. Cross give him up for purposes of experiment? Lingen and 

 you might perhaps be got to join in a memorial to that effect. 

 — Ever yours very faithfully, T. H. Huxley. 



A fresh chapter of research, the results of which he now 

 began to give to the public, was the history of the Dog. 

 On April 6 and 13 he lectured at the Royal Institution 

 " On Dogs and the Problems connected with them " — their 

 relation to other animals, and the problem of the origin of 

 the domestic dog, and the dog-like animals in general. As 

 so often before, these lectures were the outcome of the care- 



