January 1, 1865.

My dear Darwin,

I cannot do better than write my first letter of the year to you, if it is only to wish you and yours your fair share (and more than your fair share, if need be) of good for the New Year.  The immediate cause of my writing, however, was turning out my pocket and finding therein an unanswered letter of yours containing a scrap on which is a request for a photograph, which I am afraid I overlooked.  At least I hope I did, and then my manners won’t be so bad.  I enclose the latest version of myself.

I wish I could follow out your suggestion about a book on zoology. (By the way please to tell Miss Emma that my last book is a book. [The first volume of his Hunterian Lectures on “Comparative Anatomy.”  A second volume never appeared.  Miss Darwin, as her father wrote to Huxley after the delivery of his Working Men’s Lectures in 1862, “was reading your Lectures, and ended by saying, ‘I wish he would write a book.’  I answered, ‘he has just written a great book on the skull.’  ’I don’t call that a book,’ she replied, and added, ’I want something that people can read; he does write so well.’”] Marry come up!  Does her ladyship call it a pamphlet?)

But I assure you that writing is a perfect pest to me unless I am interested, and not only a bore but a very slow process.  I have some popular lectures on Physiology, which have been half done for more than a twelvemonth, and I hate the sight of them because the subject no longer interests me, and my head is full of other matters. [See letter of April 22, 1863.]

So I have just done giving a set of lectures to working-men on “The Various Races of Mankind,” which really would make a book in Miss Emma’s sense of the word, and which I have had reported.  But when am I to work them up?  Twenty-four Hunterian Lectures loom between me and Easter.  I am dying to get out the second volume of the book that is not a book, but in vain.

I trust you are better, though the last news I had of you from Lubbock was not so encouraging as I could have wished.

With best wishes and remembrances to Mrs. Darwin.

Ever yours,

T.H.  Huxley.

Thanks for “fur Darwin,” I had it.

26 Abbey Place, January 15, 1865.

My dear Darwin,

Many thanks for Deslongchamps’ paper which I do not possess.

I received another important publication yesterday morning in the shape of a small but hearty son, who came to light a little before six.  The wife is getting on capitally, and we are both greatly rejoiced at having another boy, as your godson ran great risks of being spoiled by a harem of sisters.

The leader in the “Reader” Is mine, and I am glad you like it.  The more so as it has got me into trouble with some of my friends.  However, the revolution that is going on is not to be made with rose-water.

I wish if anything occurs to you that would improve the scientific part of the “Reader,” you would let me know as I am in great measure responsible for it.