8 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY chap, i 



of diverse living constructions, and the modifications of similar 

 apparatuses to serve diverse ends. The extraordinary attrac- 

 tion I felt towards the study of the intricacies of living struc- 

 ture nearly proved fatal to me at the outset. I was a mere boy 

 — I think between thirteen and fourteen years of age — when I 

 was taken by some older student friends of mine to the first 

 post-mortem examination I ever attended. All my life I have 

 been most unfortunately sensitive to the disagreeables which 

 attend anatomical pursuits, but on this occasion my curiosity 

 overpowered all other feelings, and I spent two or three hours 

 in gratifying it. I did not cut myself, and none of the ordinary 

 symptoms of dissection-poison supervened, but poisoned I was 

 somehow, and I remember sinking into a strange state of apathy. 

 By' way of a last chance, I was sent to the care of some good, 

 kind people, friends of my father's, who lived in a farmhouse 

 in the heart of Warwickshire. I remember staggering from my 

 bed to the window on the bright spring morning after my 

 arrival, and throwing open the casement. Life seemed to come 

 back on the wings of the breeze, and to this day the faint odour 

 of vvood-smoke, like that which floated across the farmyard in 

 the early morning, is as good to me as the " sweet south upon a 

 bed of violets." I soon recovered, but for years I suffered from 

 occasional paroxysms of internal pain, and from that time my 

 constant friend, hypochondriacal dy^epsia, commenced his half- 

 century of co-tenancy of my fleshly tabernacle.* 



Some little time after his return from the voyage of the 

 Rattlesnake, Huxley succeeded in tracing his good Warwick-' 

 shire friends again. A letter of May ii, 1852, from one 

 of them. Miss K. Jaggard, tells how they had lost sight of 

 the Huxleys after their departure from Coventry ; how they 

 were themselves dispersed by death, marriage, or retire- 

 ment ; and then proceeds to draw a lively sketch of the long 

 delicate-looking lad, which clearly refers to this period or 

 a little later. 



My brother and sister who were living at Grove Fields when 

 you visited there, have now retired from the cares of business, 

 and are living very comfortably at Leamington. ... I suppose 

 you remember Mr. Joseph Russell, who used to live at Avon 

 Dassett. He is now married and gone to live at Grove Fields, 

 so that it is still occupied by a person of the same name as when 

 you knew it. But it is very much altered in appearance since 



