296 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY chap, xx 



your congress. I have been lecturing on Ethnology this year,* 

 and shall be again this year, and I would give a good deal to be 

 able to look at the complex facts of Indian Ethnology with my 

 own eyes. 



But as the sage observed, " what's impossible can't be," and 

 what with short holidays — a wife and seven children — and miles 

 of work in arrear, India is an impossibility for me. 



You say nothing about yourself, so I trust you are well and 

 hearty, and all your belongings flourishing. — Ever yours faith- 

 fully, T. H. Huxley. 



In paleontology he published this year papers on the 

 " Vertebrate Remains from the Jarrow Colliery, Kilkenny;" 

 on a new " Telerpeton from Elgin," and on some " Dino- 

 saurs from South Africa." The latter, and many more after- 

 wards, were sent over by a young man named Alfred Brown, 

 who had a curious history. A Quaker gentleman came 

 across him when employed in cleaning tools in Cirencester 

 College, found that he was a good Greek and Latin scholar, 

 and got him a tutorship in a clergyman's family at the Cape. 

 He afterwards entered the postal service, and being inspired 

 with a vivid interest in geology, spent all the leave he could 

 obtain from his office on the Orange River in getting fossils 

 from the Stormberg Rocks. These, as often as he could 

 afford to send such weighty packages, he sent to Sir R. 

 Murchison, to whom he had received a letter of introduction 

 from his official superior. Sir Roderick, writing to Huxley, 

 says " that he was proud of his new recruit," to whom he 

 sent not only welcome words of encouragement, but the no 

 less welcome news that the brother of his " discoverer," 

 hearing of the facts from Professor Woodward, offered to 

 defray his expenses so that he could collect regularly. 



On April 2 Huxley was in Edinburgh to receive the 

 first academic distinction conferred upon him in Britain. 

 He received the honorary degree of the University in com- 

 pany with Tyndall and Carlyle. It was part of the fitness of 

 things that he should be associated in this honour with his 

 close friend Tyndall ; but though he frequently acknowl- 



* As FuUerian Professor at the Royal Institution. 



