It will be a thousand pities, however, if any review interferes with your saying something on the subject yourself.  Unless it should give you needless work I heartily wish you would.

Everybody tells me I am looking so exceedingly well that I am ashamed to say a word to the contrary.  But the fact is, I get no exercise, and a great deal of bothering work on our Commission’s Cruise; and though much fatter (indeed a regular bloater myself), I am not up to the mark.  Next year I will have a real holiday. [At the end of the year, as so often, he went off for a ploy with Tyndall, this time into Derbyshire, walking vigorously over the moors.]

I am a bachelor, my wife and belongings being all at that beautiful place, Margate.  When I came back I found them all looking so seedy that I took them off bag and baggage to that, as the handiest place, before a week was over.  They are wonderfully improved already, my wife especially being abundantly provided with her favourite east wind.  Your godson is growing a very sturdy fellow, and I begin to puzzle my head with thinking what he is and what he is not to be taught.

Please to remember me very kindly to Mrs. Darwin, and believe me, yours very faithfully,

T.H.  Huxley.

[The following illustrates the value he set upon public examinations as to a practical means for spreading scientific education, and upon first-rate examiners as a safeguard of proper methods of teaching.]

October 6, 1864.

My dear Hooker,

Donnelly told me to-day that you had been applied to by the Science and Tarts Department to examine for them in botany, and that you had declined.

Will you reconsider the matter?  I have always taken a very great interest in the science examinations, looking upon them, as I do, as the most important engine for forcing science into ordinary education.

The English nation will not take science from above, so it must get it from below.

Having known these examinations from the beginning, I can assure you that they are very genuine things, and are working excellently.  And what I have regretted from the first is that the botanical business was not taken in hand by you, instead of by —.

Now, like a good fellow, think better of it.  The papers are necessarily very simple, and one of Oliver’s pupils could look them over for you.  Let us have your co-operation and the advantage of that reputation for honesty and earnestness which you have contrived (Heaven knows how) to get.

I have come back fat and seedy for want of exercise.  All my belongings are at Margate.  Hope you don’t think my review of Darwin’s critics too heretical if you have seen it.

Ever yours faithfully,

T.H.  Huxley.

When is our plan for getting some kind of meeting during the winter to be organised?

[The next two letters refer to the award of the Copley Medal to Mr. Darwin.  Huxley was exceedingly indignant at an attempt on the part of the president to discredit the “Origin” by a side wind:—­]