My wife and I were very grieved to hear you had had such a sick house, but I hope the change in the weather has done you all good.  Anything is better than the damp warmth we had.

I will take great care of the three “Barriers.” [A pamphlet called “The Three Barriers” by G.R., being notes on Mr. Darwin’s “Origin of Species” 1861, 8vo.”  Habitat, structure, and procreative power are given as these three barriers to Darwinism, against which natural theology takes its stand on Final Causes.] I wanted to cut it up in the “Saturday,” but how I am to fulfil my benevolent intentions—­with five lectures a week—­a lecture at the Royal Institution and heaps of other things on my hands, I don’t know.

Ever yours faithfully,

T.H.  Huxley.

I am very glad to hear about Brown Sequard; he is a thoroughly good man, and told me it was worth while to come all the way to Oxford to hear the Bishop pummelled.

[In the above-mentioned letter to the “Scotsman” of January 24 he expresses his unfeigned satisfaction at the fulfilment of the three objects of his address, namely, to state fully and fairly his conclusions, to avoid giving unnecessary offence, and thirdly,] “while feeling assured of the just and reasonable dealing of the respectable part of the Scottish press, I naturally hoped for noisy injustice and unreason from the rest, seeing, as I did, the best security for the dissemination of my views through regions which they might not otherwise reach, in the certainty of a violent attack by [the ’Witness’.”

The applause of the audience, he says, afforded him genuine satisfaction,] “because it bids me continue in the faith on which I acted, that a man who speaks out honestly and fearlessly that which he knows, and that which he believes, will always enlist the good-will and the respect, however much he may fail in winning the assent, of his fellow-men.”

[About this time a new field of interest was opened out to him, closely connected with, indeed, and completing, the ape question.  Sir Charles Lyell was engaged in writing his “Antiquity of Man,” and asked Huxley to supply him with various anatomical data touching the ape question, and later to draw him a diagram illustrating the peculiarities of the newly discovered Neanderthal skull as compared with other skulls.  He points out in his letters to Lyell that the range of cranial capacity between the highest and the lowest German—­“one of the mediatised princes, I suppose” [The minor princes of Germany, whose territories were annexed to larger states, and who thus exchanged a direct for a mediate share in the imperial government.—­or the Himalayan or Peruvian, is almost 100 per cent; in absolute amount twice as much as the difference between that of the largest simian and the smallest human capacity, so that in seeking an ordinal difference between man and the apes, “it would certainly be well to let go the head, though I am afraid it does not mend matters much to lay hold of the foot.”