[That there was no difficulty in this scheme was shown by the experience of the Scotch Universities; and the expense would be less than the proposed compensation tax.

The chief part of the summer vacation Huxley spent at Lynton, on the north coast of Devonshire.] “The Happy Family,” [he writes to Dr. Dohrn,] “has been spending its vacation in this pretty place, eighteen miles of up hill and down dale from any railway.” [It was a country made for the long rambles he delighted in after the morning’s due allowance of writing.  And although he generally preferred complete quiet on his holidays, with perfect freedom from all social exigencies, these weeks of rest were rendered all the pleasanter by the unstudied and unexacting friendliness of the family party which centred around Mr. and Mrs. F. Bailey of Lee Abbey hard by—­Lady Tenterden, the Julius and the Henry Pollocks, the latter old friends of ours.

Though his holiday was curtailed at either end, he was greatly set up by it, and writes to chaff his son-in-law for taking too little rest:—­]

I was glad to hear that F. had stood his fortnight’s holiday so well; three weeks might have knocked him up!

[On the same day, September 26, he wrote the letter to Dr. Dohrn, mentioned above, answering two inquiries—­one as to arrangements for exhibiting at the Fisheries Exhibition to be held in London the following year, the other as to whether England would follow the example of Germany and Italy in sending naval officers to the Zoological Station at Naples to be instructed in catching and preserving marine animals for the purposes of scientific research.

[With respect to question Number 2, I am afraid my answer must be less hopeful.  So far as the British Admiralty is represented by the ordinary British admiral, the only reply to such a proposition as you make that I should expect would be that he (the British admiral, to wit) would see you d—­d first.  However, I will speak of the matter to the Hydrographer, who really is interested in science, at the first opportunity.

[For many years before this, and until the end of his life, there was another side to his correspondence which deserves mention.

I wish that more of the queer letters, which arrived in never-failing streams, had been preserved.  A favourite type was the anonymous letter.  It prayed fervently, over four pages, that the Almighty would send him down quick into the pit, and was usually signed simply “A Lady.”  Others came from cranks of every species:  the man who demonstrated that the world was flat, or that the atmosphere had no weight—­an easy proof, for you weigh a bottle full of air; then break it to pieces, so that it holds nothing; weigh the pieces, and they are the same weight as the whole bottle full of air!  Or, again, that the optical law of quality between the angle of incidence and the angle of reflection is a delusion, whence it follows that all our established