Jessie is meditating a letter of thanks (a serious undertaking), and when it is sent the mother will have a word to say for herself.

In the middle of October scarlet fever broke out among my children, and they have all had it in succession, except Jessie, who took it seven years ago.  The last convalescent is now well, but we had the disease in the house nearly three months, and have been like lepers, cut off from all communication with our neighbours for that time.

We have had a great deal of anxiety, and my wife has been pretty nearly worn out with nursing day and night; but by great good fortune “the happy family” has escaped all permanent injury, and you might hear as much laughter in the house as at Swanage.

Will you be so kind as to thank Professor Gegenbaur for a paper on the development of the vertebral column of Lepidosteum I have just received from him?  He has been writing about the process of ossification and the “deck-knochen” question, but I cannot make out exactly where.  Could you let me know?

I am anxious for the “Arthropoden Werk,” but I expect to gasp when it comes.

Turn to page 380 of the new edition of our friend Kolliker’s “Handbuch,” and you will find that though a view which I took off the “organon adamantinae” some twelve or fourteen years ago, and which Kolliker has up to this time repudiated, turns out, and is now admitted by him, to be perfectly correct, yet “that I was not acquainted with the facts that would justify the conclusion.”  Really, if I had time I could be angry.

Pray remember me most kindly to Haeckel, to all whose enemies I wish confusion, and believe me, ever yours faithfully,

T.H.  Huxley.

P.S.—­I have read a hundred pages or so of Fanny Lewald’s first Bd., and am delighted with her insight into child-life.

[Tyndall was resigning his lectureship at the School of Mines:—­]

Jermyn Street, June 10, 1868.

My dear Tyndall,

All I can say is, I am heartily sorry.

If you feel that your lectures here interfere with your original work, I should not be a true friend either to science or yourself if I said a word against your leaving us.

But for all that I am and shall remain very sorry.

Ever yours very sincerely,

T.H.  Huxley.

If you recommend —­, of course I shall be very glad to support him in any way I can.  But at present I am rather disposed to d—­n anyone who occupies your place.

[The following extract is from a letter to Haeckel (November 13, 1868), with reference to the proposed translation of his “Morphologie” by the Ray Society:—­]

We shall at once look out for a good translator of the text, as the job will be a long and a tough one.  My wife (who sends her best wishes and congratulations on your fatherhood) will do the bits of Goethe’s poetry, and I will look after the prose citations.