Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume III Part 34

Would not "Biological Observatory" serve the turn? Of course it does not exclude experiment any more than "Astronomical Observatory"

excludes spectrum a.n.a.lysis.

Please think over this. My objection to "Transformist" is very strong.

[In August his youngest daughter wrote to him to find out the nature of various "objects of the seash.o.r.e" which she had found on the beach in South Wales. His answers make one wish that there had been more questions.]

Hodeslea, Eastbourne, August 14, 1891.

Dearest Babs,

1. "Ornary" or not "ornary" B is merely A turned upside down and viewed with the imperfect appreciation of the mere artistic eye!

2. Your little yellow things are, I expect, egg-cases of dog whelks.

You will find a lot of small eggs inside them, one or two of which grow faster than the rest, and eat up their weaker brothers and sisters.

The dog whelk is common on the sh.o.r.es. If you look for something like this [sketch of a terrier coming out of a whelk sh.e.l.l], you will be sure to recognise it.

3. Starfish are NOT born in their proper shape and don't come from your whitish yellow lumps. The thing that comes out of a starfish egg is something like this [sketch], and swims about by its cilia. The starfish proper is formed inside, and it is carried on its back this-uns.

Finally starfish drops off carrying with it t'other one's stomach, so that the subsequent proceedings interest t'other one no more.

4. The ropy sand tubes that make a sort of banks and reefs are houses of worms, that they build up out of sand, sh.e.l.ls, and slime. If you knock a lot to pieces you will find worms inside.

5. Now, how do I know what the rooks eat? But there are a lot of unconsidered trifles about and if you get a good telescope and watch, you will have a glimpse as they hover between sand and rooks' beaks.

It has been blowing more or less of a gale here from the west for weeks--usually cold, often foggy--so that it seems as if summer were going to be late, probably about November.

But we thrive fairly well. L. and J. and their chicks are here and seem to stand the inclemency of the weather pretty fairly. The children are very entertaining.

M-- has been a little complaining, but is as active as usual.

My love to Joyce, and tell her I am glad to hear she has not forgotten her astronomy.

In answer to your inquiry, Leonard says that Trevenen has twenty-five teeth. I have a sort of notion this can be hardly accurate, but never having been a mother can't presume to say.

Our best love to you all.

Ever your loving Pater.

Hodeslea, Eastbourne, August 26, 1891.

Dearest Babs,

'Pears to me your friend is a squid or pen-and-ink fish, Loligo among the learned. Probably Loligo media which I have taken in that region.

They have ten tentacles with suckers round their heads, two much longer than the others. They are close to cuttlefish, but have a thin h.o.r.n.y sh.e.l.l inside them instead of the "cuttle-bone." If you can get one by itself in a tub of water, it is pretty to see how they blush all over and go pale again, owing to little colour-bags in the skin, which expand and contract. Doubtless they took you for a heron, under the circ.u.mstances [sketch of a wader].

With slight intervals it has been blowing a gale from the west here for some months, the memory of man indeed goeth not back to the calm. I have not been really warm more than two days this so-called summer. And everybody prophesied we should be roasted alive here in summer.

We are all flouris.h.i.+ng, and send our best love to Jack and you. Tell Joyce the wallflowers have grown quite high in her garden.

Ever your loving Pater.

[Politics are not often touched upon in the letters of this period, but an extract from a letter of October 25, 1891, is of interest as giving his reason for supporting a Unionist Government, many of whose tendencies he was far from sympathising with:--]

The extract from the "Guardian" is wonderful. The Gladstonian tee-to-tum cannot have many more revolutions to make. The only thing left for him now, is to turn Agnostic, declare Homer to be an old bloke of a ballad-monger, and agitate for the prohibition of the study of Greek in all universities...

It is just because I do not want to see our children involved in civil war that I postpone all political considerations to keeping up a Unionist Government.

I may be quite wrong; but right or wrong, it is no question of party.

"Rads delight not me nor Tories neither," as Hamlet does not say.

The following letter to Sir M. Foster shows how little Huxley was now able to do in the way of public business without being knocked up:--]

Hodeslea, October 20, 1891.

My dear Foster,

If I had known the nature of the proceedings at the College of Physicians yesterday, I should have braved the tedium of listening to a lecture I could not hear in order to see you decorated. Clark had made a point of my going to the dinner [I.e. at the College of Physicians.], and, worse luck, I had to "say a few words" after it, with the result that I am entirely washed out to-day, and only able to send you the feeblest of congratulations.

Ever yours,

T.H. Huxley.

[The same thing appears in the following to Sir W.H. Flower, which is also interesting for his opinion on the question of promotion by seniority:--]

Hodeslea, Eastbourne, October 23, 1891.

My dear Flower,

My "next worst thing" was promoting a weak man to a place of responsibility in lieu of a strong one, on the mere ground of seniority.

Caeteris paribus, or with even approximate equality of qualifications, no doubt seniority ought to count; but it is mere ruin to any service to let it interfere with the promotion of men of marked superiority, especially in the case of offices which involve much responsibility.

I suppose as trustee I may requisition a copy of Woodward's Catalogue.

I should like to look a little more carefully at it...We are none the worse for our pleasant glimpse of the world (and his wife) at your house; but I find that speechifying at public dinners is one of the luxuries that I must utterly deny myself. It will take me three weeks'

quiet to get over my escapade.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

CHAPTER 3.9.

1892.

The revival of part of the former controversy which he had had with Mr.

Gladstone upon the story of creation, made a warlike beginning of an otherwise very peaceful year. Since the middle of December a great correspondence had been going on in the "Times", consequent upon the famous manifesto of the thirty-eight Anglican clergy touching the question of inspiration and the infallibility of the Bible. Criticism, whether "higher" or otherwise, defended on the one side, was unsparingly denounced on the other. After about a month of this correspondence, Huxley's name was mentioned as one of these critics; whereupon he was attacked by one of the disputants for "misleading the public" by his a.s.sertion in the original controversy that while reptiles appear in the geological record before birds, Genesis affirms the contrary; the critic declaring that the word for "creeping things"

(rehmes) created on the sixth day, does not refer to reptiles, which are covered by the "moving creatures" (shehretz) used of the first appearance of animal life.