However, it must be remarked that this love of philosophy, not recently acquired either, was only part of the passion for general principles underlying the facts of science which had always possessed him.  And the time expended upon it was not directly taken from the hours of scientific work; he would read in bed through the small hours of the night, when sleep was slow in coming to him.  In this way he got through an immense amount of philosophy in the course of several years.  Not that he could “state the views of so and so” upon any given question, or desired such kind of knowledge; he wished to find out and compare with his own the answers which other thinkers gave to the problems which interested himself.

A gentler reproof of this time touches his handwriting, which was never of the most legible, so that his foreign correspondents in particular sometimes complained.  Haeckel used to get his difficulties deciphered by his colleague Gegenbaur.  I cannot forbear quoting the delicate remonstrance of Professor Lacaze du Thiers, and the flattering remedy he proposed:—­

March 14.

Je lis l’Anglais imprime, mais vos ecritures anglaises sont si rapides, qu’il m’est quelquefois difficile de m’en sortir.  On me dit que vous ecrivez si bien le francais que je crois que je vous lirais bien mieux dans ma langue!

On his return from examining at Dublin, he again looked over proofs for Mr. Spencer.]

Jermyn Street, August 3, 1861.

My dear Spencer,

I have been absent on a journey to Dublin and elsewhere [Visiting Sir Philip Egerton at Oulton Park.] nearly all this week, and hence your note and proof did not reach me till yesterday.  I have but just had time to glance through the latter, and I need hardly say how heartily I concur in its general tenor.  I have, however, marked one or two passages which I think require some qualification.  Then, at page 272, the fact that the vital manifestations of plants depend as entirely as those of animals upon the fall towards stable equilibrium of the elements of a complex protein compound is not sufficiently prominent.  It is not so much that plants are deoxidisers and animals oxidisers, as that plants are manufacturers and animals consumers.  It is true that plants manufacture a good deal of non-nitrogenous produce in proportion to the nitrogenous, but it is the latter which is chiefly useful to the animal consumer and not the former.  This point is a very important one, which I have never seen clearly and distinctly put—­the prettiness of Dumas’ circulation of the elements having seduced everybody.

Of course this in no way affects the principle of what you say.  The statements which I have marked at page 276 and 278 should have their authorities given, I think.  I should hardly like to commit myself to them absolutely.

You will, if my memory does not mislead me, find authority for my note at page 283 in Stephenson’s life.  I think old George Stephenson brought out his views at breakfast at Sir R. Peel’s when Buckland was there.