It strikes me that it will not do to be content with a single representative of each tribe.  At least four or five will be needed to eliminate the chances of accident, and even then much will depend upon the discretion and judgment of the local agent who makes the suggestion.  This difficulty, however, applies chiefly if not solely to physical ethnology.  To the philologer the opportunities for comparing dialects and checking pronunciation will be splendid, however [few] the individual speakers of each dialect may be.  The most difficult task of all will be to prevent the assembled Savans from massacring the “specimens” at the end of the exhibition for the sake of their skulls and pelves!

I am really afraid that my own virtue might yield if so tempted!

Jesting apart, I heartily wish your plans success, and if there are any more definite ways in which I can help, let me know, and I will do my best.  You will want, I should think, a physical and a philological committee to organise schemes:  (1) for systematic measuring, weighing, and portraiture, with observation and recording of all physical characters; and (2) for uniform registering of sounds by Roman letters and collection of vocabularies and grammatical forms upon an uniform system.

I should advise you to look into the Museum of the Societe d’Anthropologie of Paris, and to put yourself in communication with M. Paul Broca, one of its most active members, who has lately been organising a scheme of general anthropological instructions.  But don’t have anything to do with the quacks who are at the head of the “Anthropological Society” over here.  If they catch scent of what you are about they will certainly want to hook on to you.

Once more I wish I had the chance of being able to visit your congress.  I have been lecturing on Ethnology this year [As Fullerian Professor at the Royal Institution.], and shall be again this year, and I would give a good deal to be able to look at the complex facts of Indian Ethnology with my own eyes.

But as the sage observed, “what’s impossible can’t be,” and what with short holidays—­a wife and seven children—­and miles of work in arrear, India is an impossibility for me.

You say nothing about yourself, so I trust you are well and hearty, and all your belongings flourishing.

Ever yours faithfully,

T.H.  Huxley.

[In paleontology he published this year papers on the “Vertebrate Remains from the Jarrow Colliery, Kilkenny;” on a new “Telerpeton from Elgin,” and on some “Dinosaurs from South Africa.”  The latter, and many more afterwards, were sent over by a young man named Alfred Brown, who had a curious history.  A Quaker gentleman came across him when employed in cleaning tools in Cirencester College, found that he was a good Greek and Latin scholar, and got him a tutorship in a clergyman’s family at the Cape.  He afterwards entered the postal service, and being inspired with a vivid interest