crater, but on the north side of this, a little way below the top, an independent cone had established itself as the most charming little pocket-volcano imaginable.  It could not have been more than 100 feet high, and at the top was a crater not more than six or seven feet across.  Out of this, with a noise exactly resembling a blast furnace and a slowly-working high pressure steam engine combined, issued a violent torrent of steam and fragments of semi-fluid lava as big as one’s fist, and sometimes bigger.  These shot up sometimes as much as 100 feet, and then fell down on the sides of the little crater, which could be approached within fifty feet without any danger.  As darkness set in, the spectacle was most strange.  The fiery stream found a lurid reflection in the slowly-drifting steam cloud, which overhung it, while the red-hot stones which shot through the cloud shone strangely beside the quiet stars in a moonless sky.

Not from the top of this cinder cone, but from its side, a couple of hundred feet down, a stream of lava issued.  At first it was not more than a couple of feet wide, but whether from receiving accessions or merely from the different form of slope, it got wider on its journey down to the Atrio del Cavallo, a thousand feet below.  The slope immediately below the exit must have been near fifty, but the lava did not flow quicker than very thick treacle would do under like circumstances.  And there were plenty of freshly cooled lava streams about, inclined at angles far greater than those which that learned Academician, Elie de Beaumont, declared to be possible.  Naturally I was ashamed of these impertinent lava currents, and felt inclined to call them “Laves mousseuses.” [Elie de Beaumont “is said to have ‘damned himself to everlasting fame’ by inventing the nickname of ’la science moussante’ for Evolutionism.”  See “Life of Darwin” 2 185.]

Courage, my friend, behold land!  I know you love my handwriting.  I am off to Rome to-day, and this day-week, if all goes well, I shall be under my own roof-tree again.  In fact I hope to reach London on Saturday evening.  It will be jolly to see your face again.

Ever yours faithfully,

T.H.  Huxley.

My best remembrances to Hirst if you see him before I do.

[My father reached home on April 6, sunburnt and bearded almost beyond recognition, but not really well, for as soon as he began work again in London, his old enemy returned.  Early hours, the avoidance of society and societies, an hour’s riding before starting at nine for South Kensington, were all useless; the whole year was poisoned until a special diet prescribed by Dr. (afterwards sir) Andrew Clark, followed by another trip abroad, effected a cure.  I remember his saying once that he learned by sad experience that such a holiday as that in Egypt was no good for him.  What he really required was mountain air and plenty of exercise.  The following letters fill up the outline of this period:—­]