i874 LETTERS TO DARWIN 



451 



The chance of clearing two or three thousand pounds in as 

 many months is not to be sneezed at by a pere de famille. I am 

 getting sick of the state of things here. — Ever yours faithfully, 



T. H. Huxley. 



I have heard no more about the spirit photographs I 



4 Marlborough Place, April 16, 1874. 



My dear Darwin — Put my contribution into the smallest 

 type possible, for it will be read by none but anatomists ; and 

 never mind where it goes. 



I am glad you agree with me about the hand and foot and 

 skull question. As Ward * said of Mill's opinions, you can only 



account for the views of Messrs. and Co. on the supposition 



of " grave personal sin " on their part. 



I had a letter from Dohrn a day or two ago in which he tells 

 me he has written to you. I suspect he has been very ill. 



Let us know when you are in town, and believe me, — Ever 

 yours very faithfully, T. H. Huxley. 



The allusion in the letter of March 31, to certain " spirit 

 photographs " refers to a series of these wonderful produc- 

 tions sent to him by a connection of Mr. Darwin's, who was 

 interested in these matters, and to whom he replied, showing 

 how the efifect might have been produced by simple me- 

 chanical means. 



It was at this gentleman's house that in January a care- 

 fully organised seance was held, at which my father was 

 present incognito, so far as the medium was concerned, and 

 on which he wrote the following report to Mr. Darwin, 

 referred to in his Life, vol. iii. p. 187. 



It must be noted that he had had fairly extensive ex- 

 perience of spiritualism ; he had made regular experiments 

 with Mrs. Haydon at his brother George's house (the paper 

 on which these are recorded is undated, but it must have 

 been before 1863); he was referred to as a disbeliever in 

 an article in the Pall Mall Gazette during January 1869, as 

 a sequel to which a correspondent sent him an account of 

 the confessions of the Fox girls, who had started spiritualism 

 forty years before. At the houses of other friends, he had 



* W. G. Ward. (See p. 338.) 



