Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H.  Huxley.

4 Marlborough Place, N.W., October 12, 1875.

My dear Baynes,

Do you remember my telling you that I should before long be publishing a book, of which general considerations on Biology would form a part, and that I should have to go over the same ground as in the article for the Encyclopaedia?

Well, that prediction is about to be verified, and I want to know what
I am to do.

You see, as I am neither dealing with Theology, nor History, nor Criticism, I can’t take a fresh departure and say something entirely different from what I have just written.

On the other hand, if I republish what stands in the article, the
Encyclopaedia very naturally growls.

What do the sweetest of Editors and the most liberal of Proprietors say ought to be done under the circumstances?

I pause for a reply.

I have carried about Stanley’s note in my pocket-book until I am sorry to say the flyleaf has become hideously stained. [The Dean’s handwriting was proverbial.]

The wife and daughters could make nothing of it, but I, accustomed to the manuscript of certain correspondents, have no doubt as to the fourth word of the second sentence.  It is “Canterbury.” [The writing of this word is carefully slurred until it is almost as illegible as the original.] Nothing can be plainer.

Hoping the solution is entirely satisfactory,

Believe me, ever yours very faithfully,

T.H.  Huxley.

[Though he refused to undertake the article on “Distribution,” he managed to write that on “Evolution” (republished in “Collected Essays” 2 187).  Thus on July 28, 1877, he writes:—­]

I ought to do “Evolution,” but I mightn’t and I shouldn’t.  Don’t see how it is practicable to do justice to it with the time at my disposal, though I really should like to do it, and I am at my wits’ end to think of anybody who can be trusted with it.

Perhaps something may turn up, and if so I will let you know.

[The something in the world of more time did turn up by dint of extra pressure, and the article got written in the course of the autumn, as appears from the following of December 29, 1877:—­]

I send you the promised skeleton (with a good deal of the flesh) of Evolution.  It is costing me infinite labour in the way of reading, but I am glad to be obliged to do the work, which will be a curious and instructive chapter in the history of Science.

[The lawyer-like faculty of putting aside a subject when done with, which is indicated in the letter of March 16, 1875, reappears in the following:—­]

4 Marlborough Place, N.W., March 18, 1878.

My dear Baynes,

Your printers are the worst species of that diabolic genus I know of.  It is at least a month since I sent them a revise of “Evolution” by no means finished, and from that time to this I have had nothing from them.