I did my best to give the children your message, but I fear I failed ignominiously in giving the proper bovine vocalisation to “Mroo.”

That small curly-headed boy Harry, struck, I suppose by the kindness you both show to children, has effected a synthesis between you and Tyndall, and gravely observed the other day, “Doctor Dohrn-Tyndall do say Mroo.”

My wife...Sends her kind regards.  The “seven” are not here or they would vote love by acclamation.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H.  Huxley.

[He did not this year attend the British Association, which was held in Dundee.  This was the first occasion on which an evening was devoted to a working men’s lecture, a step important as tending towards his own ideal of what science should be:—­not the province of a few, but the possession of the many.

This first lecture was delivered by Professor Tyndall, who wrote him an account of the meeting, and in particular of his reconciliation with Professors Thomson (Lord Kelvin) and Tait, with whom he had had a somewhat embittered controversy.

In his reply, Huxley writes:—­]

To J. Tyndall.

Thanks also for a copy of the “Dundee Advertiser” containing your lecture.  It seemed to me that the report must be a very good one, and the lecture reads exceedingly well.  You have inaugurated the working men’s lectures of the Association in a way that cannot be improved.  And it was worth the trouble, for I suspect they will become a great and noble feature in the meetings.

Everything seems to have gone well at the meeting, the educational business carried [i.e. a recommendation that natural science be made a part of the curriculum in the public schools], and the anthropologers making fools of themselves in a most effectual way.  So that I do not feel that I have anything to reproach myself with for being absent.

I am very pleased to hear of the reconciliation with Thomson and Tait.  The mode of it speaks well for them, and the fact will remove a certain source of friction from amongst the cogs of your mental machinery.

[The following gives the reason for his resigning the Fullerian lectureship:—­]

Athenaeum Club, May, 1867.

My dear Tyndall,

A conversation I had with Bence Jones yesterday reminded me that I ought to have communicated with you.  But we do not meet so often as we used to do, being, I suppose, both very busy, and I forget to write.

You recollect that the last time we talked together, you mentioned a notion of Bence Jones’s to make the Fullerian Professorship of Physiology a practically permanent appointment, and that I was quite inclined to stick by that (if such arrangement could be carried out), and give up other things.

But since I have been engaged in the present course of lectures I have found reason to change my views.  It is very hard work, and takes up every atom of my time to make the lectures what they should be; and I find that at this time of year, being more or less used up, I suppose, with the winter work, I stand the worry and excitement of the actual lectures very badly.  Add to this that it is six weeks clean gone out of the only time I have disposable for real scientific progress, and you will understand how it is that I have made up my mind to resign.