i863 PRESSURE OF WORK 265 



fish in progress ; a fellow in the country will keep on sending me 

 splendid new Labyrinthodonts from the coal, and that d — d 

 manual must come out. — Ayes pitie de moi. T. H. H. 



Jermyn Street, July 2, 1863. 



My dear Darwin— I am horribly loth to say that I cannot 

 do anything you want done ; and partly for that reason and 

 partly because we have been very busy here with some new 

 arrangements during the last day or two, I did not at once reply 

 to your note. 



I am afraid, however, I cannot undertake any sort of new 

 work. In spite of working like a horse (or if you prefer it, like 

 an ass), I find myself scandalously in arrear, and I shall get into 

 terrible hot water if I do not clear off some things that have 

 been hanging about me for months and years. 



If you will send me up the specimens, however, I will ask 

 Flower (whom I see constantly) to examine them for you. The 

 examination will be no great trouble, and I am ashamed to make 

 a fuss about it, but I have sworn a big oath to take no fresh 

 work, great or small, until certain things are done. 



I wake up in the morning with somebody saying in my ear, 

 " A is pot done, and B is not done, and C is not done, and D is 

 not done," etc., and a feeling like a fellow whose duns are all 

 in the street waiting for him. By the way, you ask me what I 

 am doing now, so I will just enumerate some of the A, B, and 

 C's aforesaid. 



A. Editing lectures on Vertebrate skull and bringing them 

 out in the Medical Times. 



B. Editing and re-writing lectures on Elementary Physiolo- 

 gy,* just delivered here and' reported as I went along. 



C. Thinking of my course of twenty-four lectures on the 

 Mammalia at Coll. Surgeons in next spring, and making investi- 

 gations bearing on the same. 



D. Thinking of and working at a Manual of Comparative 

 Anatomy (may it be d — d), which I have had in hand these 

 seven years. 



* Delivered on Friday evenings from April to June at Jermyn 

 Street, and reported in the Medical Times. They formed the basis of 

 his well-known little book on Elementary Physiology, published 1866. 

 He writes on April 22: — " Macmillan has just been with me, and I 

 am let in for a school book on physiology based on these lectures of 

 mine. Money arrangements not quite fixed yet, but he is a good fel- 

 low, and will not do me unnecessarily." 



