Royal Society in the summer of 1881.  He took a keen interest in these investigations, and he wrote to me from North Wales, at the end of 1881,] “The salmon brought to me here have not been so badly diseased as I could have wished, and the fungus dies so rapidly out of the water that only one specimen furnished me with materials in lively condition.  These I have cultivated:  and to my great satisfaction have got some flies infected.  With nine precious muscoid corpses, more or less ornamented with a lovely fur trimming of Saprolegnia, I shall return to London to-morrow, and shall be ready in a short time, I hope, to furnish Salmon Disease wholesale, retail, or for exportation.”

[In carrying out the duties of our office, Professor Huxley and I were necessarily thrown into very close communication.  There were few days in which we did not pass some time in each other’s company:  there were many weeks in which we travelled together through the river basins of this country.  I think that I am justified in saying that official intercourse ripened into warm personal friendship, and that, for the many months in which we served together, we lived on terms of intimacy which are rare among colleagues or even among friends.

It is needless to say that, as a companion, Professor Huxley was the most delightful of men.  Those who have met him in society, or enjoyed the hospitality of his house, must have been conscious of the singular charm of a conversation, which was founded on knowledge, enlarged by memory, and brightened by humour.  But, admirable as he was in society, no one could have realised the full charm of his company who had not conversed with him alone.  He had the rare art of placing men, whose knowledge and intellect were inferior to his own, at their ease.  He knew how to draw out all that was best in the companion who suited him; and he had equal pleasure in giving and receiving.  Our conversation ranged over every subject.  We discussed together the grave problems of man and his destiny; we disputed on the minor complications of modern politics; we criticised one another’s literary judgments; and we laughed over the stories which we told one another, and of which Professor Huxley had an inexhaustible fund.

In conversation Professor Huxley displayed the quality which distinguished him both as a writer and a public speaker.  He invariably used the right words in the right sense.  Those who are jointly responsible—­as he and I were often jointly responsible—­for some written document, have exceptional opportunities of observing this quality.  Professor Huxley could always put his finger on a wrong word, and he always instinctively chose the right one.  It was this qualification—­a much rarer one than people imagine—­which made Professor Huxley’s essays clear to the meanest understanding, and which made him, in my judgment, the greatest master of prose of his time.  The same quality was equally observable in his spoken speech.  I happened to be present at the anniversary dinner of the Royal Society, at which Professor Huxley made his last speech.  And, as he gave an admirable account of the share which he had taken in defending Mr. Darwin against his critics, I overheard the present Prime Minister (Lord Salisbury.) say, “What a beautiful speaker he is.”