The personal welcome he received from the friends he visited was of the warmest.  On the arrival of the “Germanic” the travellers were met by Mr. Appleton the publisher, and carried off to his country house at Riverdale.  While his wife was taken to Saratoga to see what an American summer resort was like, he himself went on the 9th to New Haven, to inspect the fossils at Yale College, collected from the Tertiary deposits of the Far West by Professor Marsh, with great labour and sometimes at the risk of his scalp.  Professor Marsh told me how he took him to the University, and proposed to begin by showing him over the buildings.  He refused.] “Show me what you have got inside them; I can see plenty of bricks and mortar in my own country.” [So they went straight to the fossils, and as Professor Marsh writes ("American Journal of Science” volume 1 August 1895.):—­

One of Huxley’s lectures in New York was to be on the genealogy of the horse, a subject which he had already written about, based entirely upon European specimens.  My own explorations had led me to conclusions quite different from his, and my specimens seemed to me to prove conclusively that the horse originated in the New World and not in the Old, and that its genealogy must be worked out here.  With some hesitation, I laid the whole matter frankly before Huxley, and he spent nearly two days going over my specimens with me, and testing each point I made.

At each inquiry, whether he had a specimen to illustrate such and such a point or exemplify a transition from earlier and less specialised forms to later and more specialised ones, Professor Marsh would simply turn to his assistant and bid him fetch box number so and so, until Huxley turned upon him and said,] “I believe you are a magician; whatever I want, you just conjure it up.”

[The upshot of this examination was that he recast a great part of what he meant to say at New York.  When he had seen the specimens, and thoroughly weighed their import, continues Professor Marsh:—­

He then informed me that all this was new to him, and that my facts demonstrated the evolution of the horse beyond question, and for the first time indicated the direct line of descent of an existing animal.  With the generosity of true greatness, he gave up his own opinions in the face of new truth, and took my conclusions as the basis of his famous New York lecture on the horse.  He urged me to prepare without delay a volume on the genealogy of the horse, based upon the specimens I had shown him.  This I promised, but other work and new duties have thus far prevented.

A letter to his wife describes his visit to Yale:—­]

My excellent host met me at the station, and seems as if he could not make enough of me.  I am installed in apartments which were occupied by his uncle, the millionaire Peabody, and am as quiet as if I were in my own house.  We have had a preliminary canter over the fossils, and I have seen some things which were worth all the journey across.