132 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY chap, vm 



interest in marine zoology was the starting-point of a warm 

 friendship with the, rising naturahst, some fifteen years his 

 junior. He was strongly urged by the younger man to 

 complete and systematise his observations by taking in turn 

 all the species of each genus of annelids found at Tenby, 

 and working them up into a series of little monographs 

 " which would be the best of all possible foundations for a 

 History of the British Annelidae " : — 



To Dr. Dyster 



Jan. 5, 1855. 



[He begins by confessing " a considerable liberty " he had 

 been taking with Dyster's name, in calling a joint discovery of 

 this, which he described in the Edinburgh New Philosophical 

 Journal, Protula Dysteri.] 



Are you very savage? If so, you must go and take a walk 

 along the sands and see the slant rays of the sunset tipping the 

 rollers as they break on the beach ; that always made even me at 

 peace with all the world, and a fortiori it will you. 



Truly, I wish I had any such source of consolation. Chim- 

 ney pots are highly injurious to my morals, and my temper is 

 usually in proportion to the extent of my horizon. 



I have been swallowing oceans of disgust lately. All sorts 

 of squabbles, some made by my own folly and others by the 

 malice of other people, and no great sea and sky to go out under, 

 and be alone and forget it all. 



You may have seen my name advertised by Reeve as about 

 to write a memoir of poor Forbes, to be prefixed to a collection 

 of his essays. I found that to be a mere bookseller's dodge on 

 Reeve's part, and when I made the discovery, of course we had 

 a battle-royal, and I have now wholly withdrawn from it. 



I find, however, that one's kind and generous friends imagine 

 it was an electioneering manceuvre on my part for Edinburgh. 

 Imagine how satisfactory. I forget whether I told you that I 

 had been asked to stand for Edinburgh and have done so. 

 Whether I shall be appointed or not I do not know. So far as 



help), and later to Charles Kingsley, whom he first met at the end of 

 June 1855. " What Kingsley do you refer to?" he writes on May 6, 

 "Alton Locke Kingsley or Photographic Kingsley? I shall be right 

 glad to find good men and true anywhere, and I will take your bail for 

 any man. But the work must be critically done." 



