1858 ENOUGH ABOUT MY " ICH " j^j 



my taste. The articles you refer to are not mine, as, indeed, 

 you rightly divined. The only considerable book I have trans- 

 lated is Kolliker's Histology — in conjunction with Mr. Busk, 

 an old friend of mine. All translation and article writing is 

 weary work, and I never do it except for filthy lucre. Lecturing 

 I do not like much better; though one way or another I have to 

 give about sixty or seventy a year. 



Now then, I think that is enough about my " Ich." You 

 shall have a photographic image of him and my wife and child 

 as soon as I can find time to have them done. . . . 



I Eldon Place, Broadstairs, Sept. 5, 1858. 



My dear Hooker— I am glad Mrs. Hooker has found rest 

 for the sole of her foot. I returned her Tyndall's letter 

 yesterday. 



Wallace's impetus seems to have set Darwin going in 

 earnest, and I am rejoiced to hear we shall learn his views in 

 full, at last. I look forward to a great revolution being effected. 

 Depend upon it, in natural history, as in everything else, when 

 the English mind fully determines to work a thing out, it will 

 do it better than any other. 



I firmly believe in the advent of an English epoch in science 

 and art, which will lick the Augustan (which, by the bye, had 

 neither science nor art in our sense, but you know what I mean) 

 into fits. So hooray, in the first place, for the Genera plantarum. 

 I can quite understand the need of a new one, and I am right 

 glad you have undertaken it. It seems to me to be in all respects 

 the sort of work for you, and exactly adapted to your environ- 

 ment at Kew. I remember you mentioned to me some time 

 ago that you were thinking of it. 



I wish I could even hope that such a thing would be even 

 attempted in the course of this generation for animals. 



But with animal morphology in the state in which it is now, 

 we have no terminology that will stand, and consequently con- 

 cise and comparable definitions are in many cases impossible. 



If old Dom. Gray * were but an intelligent activity instead of 

 being a sort of zoological whirlwind, what a deal he might do. 

 And I am hopeless of Owen's comprehending what classification 

 means since the publication of the wonderful scheme which 

 adorns the last edition of his lectures. 



* John Eriward Gray (1800-1875), appointed Keeper of the Zoologi- 

 cal Collections in the British Museum in 1840. 



