344 GEORGE JOHN ROMANES 183 



Weismann ought not to wonder at the ' bitterness ' 

 of Spencer's attack, looking to the effects of denying 

 use-inheritance upon the whole system of Synthetic 

 Phil. 



94 St. Aldate's, Oxford : September 26, 1893. 



My dear Dyer, — This is one of my bad days, and 

 I have just exhausted my little store of energy by 

 answering a kind letter from Huxley. So please 

 excuse brevity, as I cannot leave your highly appre- 

 ciated benevolence without an immediate response. 



I am much concerned to hear what you say about 

 yourself, and it makes me doubly desirous of seeing 

 you. On Monday next I am to try to go to town for 

 the purpose of consulting doctors. But any day 

 before that we should be truly glad if you could come 

 as you so kindly propose. Possibly I might be able 

 to drive out to Kew on Tuesday or Wednesday of 

 next week, should you find it impracticable to run 

 down here before then. But I fluctuate so much 

 from day to day that I cannot make any engagements. 



Most fully do I agree with all that you say re- 

 garding criticism. And, especially from yourself, I 

 have never met with any but the fairest. Even the 

 spice of it was never bitter, or such as could injure 

 the gustatory nerves of the most thin-skinned of 

 men. I have, indeed, often wondered how you and 

 and can have so persistently misunder- 

 stood my ideas, seeing that neither on the Continent 

 nor in America has there been any difficulty in 

 making myself intelligible. But this, of course, is 

 quite another matter. 



