4 Marlborough Place, London, N.W., December 27, 1876.

My dear Marsh,

I hope you do not think it remiss of me that I have not written to you since my return, but you will understand that I plunged into a coil of work, and will forgive me.  But I do not mean to let you slip away without sending you all our good wishes for its successor—­which I hope will not vanish without seeing you among us.

I blew your trumpet the other day at the London Institution in a lecture about the Horse question.  I did not know then that you had got another step back as I see you have by the note to my last lecture, which Youmans has just sent me.

I must thank you very heartily for the pains you have taken over the woodcuts of the lectures.  It is a great improvement to have the patterns of the grinders.

I promised to give a lecture at the Royal Institution on the 21st January next, and I am thinking of discoursing on the Birds with teeth.  Have you anything new to tell on that subject?  I have implicit faith in the inexhaustibility of the contents of those boxes.

Our voyage home was not so successful as that out.  The weather was cold and I got a chill which laid me up for several days, in fact I was not well for some weeks after my return.  But I am vigorous again now.

Pray remember me kindly to all New Haven friends.  My wife joins with me in kindest regards and good wishes for the new year.  “Tell him we expect to see him next year.”

I am, yours very faithfully,

T.H.  Huxley.

[On December 16 he delivered a lecture “On the Study of Biology,” in connection with the Loan Collection of Scientific Apparatus at South Kensington ("Collected Essays” 3 262), dealing with the origin of the name Biology, its relation to Sociology—­] “we have allowed that province of Biology to become autonomous; but I should like you to recollect that this is a sacrifice, and that you should not be surprised if it occasionally happens that you see a biologist apparently trespassing in the region of philosophy or politics; or meddling with human education; because, after all, that is a part of his kingdom which he has only voluntarily forsaken"]—­how to learn biology, the use of Museums, and above all, the utility of biology, as helping to give right ideas in this world, which] “is after all, absolutely governed by ideas, and very often by the wildest and most hypothetical ideas.”

[This lecture on Biology was first published among the “American Addresses” in 1877.

It was about this time that an extremely Broad Church divine was endeavouring to obtain the signatures of men of science to a document he had drawn up protesting against certain orthodox doctrines.  Huxley, however, refused to sign the protest, and wrote the following letter of explanation, a copy of which he sent to Mr. Darwin.]

November 18, 1876.

Dear Sir,