446 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY chap, xxvih 



as still as mice. There has been a great row about Tyndall's 

 address, and I had some reason to expect that I should have 

 to meet a frantically warlike audience. But it was quite other- 

 wise, and though I spoke my mind with very great plainness 

 I never had a warmer reception. And I am not without hope 

 that I have done something to allay the storm, though, as you 

 may be sure, I did not sacrifice plain speaking to that end. ... I 

 have been most creditably quiet here, and have gone to no din- 

 ners or breakfasts or other such fandangoes except those I ac- 

 cepted before leaving home. Sunday I spent quietly here, think- 

 ing over my lecture and putting my peroration, which required 

 a good deal of care, into shape. I wandered out into the fields 

 in the afternoon, and sat a long time thinking of all that had 

 happened since I was here a young beginner, two and twenty, 

 and . . . you were largely in my thoughts, which were full of 

 blessings and tender memories. 



I had a good night's work last night. I dined with the Presi- 

 dent of the College, then gave my lecture. After that I smoked 

 a bit with Foster till eleven o'clock, and then I went to the 

 Northern Whig office to see that the report of my lecture was 

 all right. It is the best paper here, and the Editor had begged 

 me to see to the report, and I was anxious myself that I should 

 be rightly represented. So I sat there till a quarter past one 

 having the report read and correcting it when necessary. Then 

 I came home and got to bed about two. I have just been to the 

 section and read my paper there to a large audience who cannot 

 have understood ten words of it, but who looked highly edified, 

 and now I have done. Our lodging has turned out admirably, 

 and Ball's company has been very pleasant. So that the fiasco 

 of our arrangements was all for the best. 



I take the account of this last mentioned paper in Sec- 

 tion D from the report in Nature: — 



Professor Huxley opened the last day of the session with an 

 account of his recent observations on the development of the 

 Columella auris in Amphibia. (He described it as an outgrowth 

 of the periotic capsule, and therefore unconnected with any 

 visceral arch). . . . 



In the absence of Mr. Parker there was no one competent 

 to criticise the paper from personal knowledge ; but a word 

 dropped as to the many changes in the accepted homologies of 

 the ossicula auditus, elicited a masterly and characteristic ex- 

 position of the series of new facts, and the modifications of the 



