We will consider this business formally settled, and I shall speak of it officially.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H.  Huxley.

[I cannot place the following letter to Matthew Arnold with certainty, but it must have been written about this period. (The most probable date being 1869, for on July 1 of that year he dined with Matthew Arnold at Harrow.) Everyone will sympathise with the situation:—­]

26 Abbey Place, July 8.

My dear Arnold,

Look at Bishop Wilson on the sin of covetousness and then inspect your umbrella stand.  You will there see a beautiful brown smooth-handled umbrella which is not your property.

Think of what the excellent prelate would have advised and bring it with you next time you come to the club.  The porter will take care of it for me.

Ever yours faithfully,

T.H.  Huxley.

[The following letter shows how paleontological work was continually pouring in upon him:—­]

Jermyn Street, May 7, 1869.

My dear Darwin,

Do you recollect recommending that the “Nassau,” which sailed under Captain Mayne’s command for Magellan’s Straits some years ago should explore a fossiliferous deposit at the Gallegos River?

They visited the place the other day as you will see by Cunningham’s letter which I enclose, and got some fossils which are now in my hands.

The skull to which Cunningham refers, consists of little more than the jaws, but luckily nearly all the teeth are in place, and prove it to be an entirely new ungulate mammal with teeth in uninterrupted series like Anoplotherium, about as big as a small horse.

What a wonderful assemblage of beasts there seems to have been in South America!  I suspect if we could find them all they would make the classification of the Mammalia into a horrid mess.

Ever yours faithfully,

T.H.  Huxley.

[And on July 16, 1869, he writes again to Darwin:—­]

To tell you the truth, what with fossils, Ethnology and the great question of “Darwinismus” which is such a worry to us all, I have lost sight of the collectors and naturalists “by grace of the dredge,” almost as completely as you have.

[Indeed, the pressure was so great that he resolved to give up the Hunterian Lectures at the College of Surgeons, as he had already given up the Fullerian Professorship at the Royal Institution.  So he writes to Professor (afterwards Sir William) Flower:—­]

Jermyn Street, June 7, 1869.

Private, confidential, particular.

My dear Flower,

I have written to Quain [President of the Royal College of Surgeons.] to tell him that I do not propose to be put in nomination for the Hunterian Chair this year.  I really cannot stand it with the British Association hanging over my head.  So make thy shoulders ready for the gown, and practise the goose-step in order to march properly behind the mace, and I will come and hear your inaugural.