1890 AFFINITIES OF THE MOLLUSCA 2 7S 



4 Marlborough Place, fane 10, 1890. 



Dear Dr. Pelseneer — I gave directions yesterday for the 

 packing up and sending to your address of the specimens of 

 Trigonia, and I trust that they will reach you safely. 



I am rejoiced that you are about to take up the subject. I 

 was but a beginner when I worked at Trigonia, and I had always 

 promised myself that I would try to make good the many de- 

 ficiencies of my little sketch. But three or four years ago my 

 health gave way completely, and though I have recovered (no 

 less to my own astonishment than to that of the doctors) 1 am 

 compelled to live out of London and to abstain from all work 

 which involves much labour. 



Thus science has got so far ahead of me that I hesitate to 

 say much about a difficult morphological question — all the more, 

 as old men like myself should be on their guard against over- 

 much tenderness for their own speculations. And I am con- 

 scious of a great tenderness for those contained in my ancient 

 memoir on the " Morphology of the Cephalous Mollusca." Cer- 

 tainly I am entirely disposed to agree with you that the Gastero- 

 pods and the Lamellibranchs spring from a common root — 

 nearly represented by the Chiton — especially by a hypothetical 

 Chiton with one shell plate. 



I always thought Nucula the key to the Lamellibranchs, and 

 I am very glad you have come to that conclusion on such much 

 better evidence. — I am, dear Dr. Pelseneer, yours very faithfully, 



T. H. Huxley. 



Towards the end of June he went for a week to Salis- 

 bury, taking long walks in the neighbourhood, and ex- 

 ploring the town and cathedral, which he confessed himself 

 ashamed never to have seen before. 



He characteristically fixes its date in his memory by 

 noting that the main part of it was completed when Dante 

 was a year old. 



The White Hart, Salisbury, June 22, 1890. 



My dear Donnelly — Couldn't stand any more London, so 

 bolted here yesterday morning, and here I shall probably stop 

 for the next few days. 



I have been trying any time the last thirty years to see 

 Stonehenge, and this time I mean to do it. I should have gone 

 to-day, but the weather was not promising, so I spent my Sunday 

 morning in Old Sarum — that blessed old tumulus with nine (or 

 was it eleven?) burgesses that used to send two members to 



