Ever, my dear Sir, very faithfully yours,

T.H.  Huxley.

Professor Leuckart.

[At this time Sir J. Hooker was writing, as an introduction to his “Flora of Tasmania,” his essay on the “Flora of Australia,” published in 1859—­a book which owed its form to the influence of Darwin, and in return lent weighty support to evolutionary theory from the botanical side.  He sent his proofs for Huxley to read.

14 Waverley Place, N.W., April 22, 1859.

My dear Hooker,

I have read your proofs with a great deal of attention and interest.  I was greatly struck with the suggestions in the first page, and the exposure of the fallacy “that cultivated forms recur to wild types if left alone” is new to me and seems of vast importance.

The argument brought forward in the note is very striking and as simple as the egg of Columbus, when one sees it.  I have marked one or two passages which are not quite clear to me...

I have been accused of writing papers composed of nothing but heads of chapters, and I think you tend the same way.  Please take the trouble to make the two lines I have scored into a paragraph, so that poor devils who are not quite so well up in the subject as yourself may not have to rack their brains for an hour to supply all the links of your chain of argument...

You see that I am in a carping humour, but the matter of the essays seems to me to be so very valuable that I am jealous of the manner of it.

I had a long visit from Greene of Cork yesterday.  He is very Irish, but very intelligent and well-informed, and I am in hopes he will do good service.  He is writing a little book on the Protozoa, which (so far as I have glanced over the proof sheets as yet) seems to show a very philosophical turn of mind.  It is very satisfactory to find the ideas one has been fighting for beginning to take root.

I do not suppose my own personal contributions to science will ever be anything very grand, but I shall be well content if I have reason to believe that I have done something to stir up others.

Ever yours faithfully,

T.H.  Huxley.

[To the same:—­]

April, 1859.

My dear Hooker,

...I pity you—­as for the MSS. it is one of those cases for which penances were originally devised.  What do you say to standing on your head in the garden for one hour per diem for the next week?  It would be a relief...

I suppose you will be at the Phil.  Club next Monday.  In the meanwhile don’t let all the flesh be worried off your bones (there isn’t much as it is).

Ever yours faithfully,

T.H.  Huxley.

14 Waverley Place, July 29, 1859.

My dear Hooker,