440 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY chap, xxvin 



asked by Professor Ray Lankester, then a Fellow of Uni- 

 versity College, if he could not break his journey there, 

 and inspect the results of his investigations on Lymnaeus. 

 The answer was as follows : — 



We go to Birmingham on Friday by the three o'clock train, 

 but there is no chance of stopping at Oxford either going or 

 coming, so that unless you bring a Lymnaeus or two (under 

 guise of periwinkles for refreshment) to the carriage door I 

 shall not be able to see them. 



The following letters refer both to this address on 

 Priestley, and to the third of the important addresses of this 

 year, that " On the Hypothesis that Animals are Automata, 

 and its History " {Coll. Ess. i. 199, see also p. 442 below). 

 The latter was delivered at Belfast before the British Asso- 

 ciation under Tyndall's presidency. It appears that only 

 a month before, he had not so much as decided upon his 

 subject — indeed, was thinking of something quite different. 



The first allusion in these letters is to a concluding 

 phase of Tyndall's controversy upon the claims of the late 

 Principal Forbes in the matter of Glacier theory : — 



4 Marlborough Place, London, N.W., 

 June 24, 1874. 



My dear Tyndall — I quite agree with your Scotch friend 

 in his estimate of Forbes, and if he were alive and the con- 

 troversy beginning I should say draw your picture in your best 

 sepia or lamp black. But I have been thinking over this matter 

 a good deal since I received your letter, and my verdict is, leave 

 that tempting piece of portraiture alone. 



The world is neither wise nor just, but it makes up for all 

 its folly and injustice by being damnably sentimental, and the 

 more severely true your portrait might be the more loud would 

 be the outcry against it. I should say publish a new edition of 

 your Glaciers of the Alps, make a clear historical statement of 

 all the facts showing Forbes's relations to Rendu and Agassiz, 

 and leave the matter to the judgment of your contemporaries. 

 That will sink in and remain when all the hurly-burly is over. 



I wonder if that address is begun, and if you are going to 

 be as wise and prudent as I was at Liverpool. When I think of 

 the temptation I resisted on that occasion, like Clive when he was 

 charged with peculation, " I marvel at my own forbearance ! " 



