latitudes are incorrect, and the difference of temperature between Labrador and Ireland, nominally on the same parallel, is easily accounted for.  Then came the suggestions of little pieces of work that might so easily be undertaken by a man of Huxley’s capacity, learning, and energy.  Enormous manuscripts were sent him with a request that he would write a careful criticism of them, and arrange for their publication in the proceedings of some learned society or first-rate magazine.  One of the most delightful came this year.  A doctor in India, having just read “John Inglesant,” begged Professor Huxley to do for Science what Mr. Shorthouse had done for the Church of England.  As for the material difficulties in the way of getting such a book written in the midst of other work, the ingenious doctor suggested the use of a phonograph driven by a gas-engine.  The great thoughts dictated into it from the comfort of an armchair, could easily be worked up into novel shape by a collaborator.

India, again, provided the following application of 1885, made in all seriousness by a youthful Punjaubee with scientific aspirations, who feared to be forced into the law.  After an intimate account of his life, he modestly appeals for a post in some scientific institution, where he may get his food, do experiments three or four hours a day, and learn English.  Latterly his mental activity had been very great:—­“I have been contemplating,” he says, “to give a new system of Political Economy to the world.  I have questioned, perhaps with success, the validity of some of the fundamental doctrines of Herbert Spencer’s synthetic philosophy,” and so on.

Another remarkable communication is a reply-paid telegram from the States, in 1892, which ran as follows:—­

Unless all reason and all nature have deceived me, I have found the truth.  It is my intention to cross the ocean to consult with those who have helped me most to find it.  Shall I be welcome?  Please answer at my expense, and God grant we all meet in life on earth.

Another, of British origin this time, was from a man who had to read a paper before a local Literary Society on the momentous question, “Where are we?” so he sent round a circular to various authorities to reinforce his own opinions on the six heads into which he proposed to divide his discourse, namely: 

Where are we in Space?

Where are we in Science?

Where are we in Politics?

Where are we in Commerce?

Where are we in Sociology?

Where are we in Theology?

The writer received an answer, and a mild one:—­]

Any adequate reply to your inquiry would be of the nature of a treatise, and that, I regret, I cannot undertake to write.

[Two letters of this year touch on Irish affairs, in which he was always interested, having withal a certain first-hand knowledge of the people and the country they lived in, from his visits there, both as a Fishery Commissioner and on other occasions.  He writes warmly to the historian who treated of Ireland without prejudice or rancour.]