Ever yours,

T.H.  Huxley.

[In spite of his anxieties, his health was slowly improving under careful regimen.  He published no scientific memoirs this year, but in addition to his regular lectures, he was working to finish his “Manual of Invertebrate Anatomy” and his “Introductory Primer,” and to write his Aberdeen address; he was also at work upon the “Pedigree of the Horse” and on “Bodily Motion and Consciousness.”  He delivered a course to teachers on Psychology and Physiology, and was much occupied by the Royal Commission on Science.  As a governor of Owens College he had various meetings to attend, though his duties did not extend, as some of his friends seem to have thought, to the appointment of a Professor of Physiology there.]

My life (he writes to Sir Henry Roscoe) is becoming a burden to me because of —.  Why I do not know, but for some reason people have taken it into their heads that I have something to do with appointments in Owens College, and no fewer than three men of whose opinion I think highly have spoken or written to me urging —­’s merits very strongly.

[This summer he again took a long holiday, thanks to the generosity of his friends, and with better results.  He went with his old friend Hooker to the Auvergne, walking, geologising, sketching, and gradually discarding doctor’s orders.  Sir Joseph Hooker has very kindly written me a letter from which I give an account of this trip:—­

It was during the many excursions we took together, either by ourselves or with one of my boys, that I knew him best at his best:  and especially during one of several weeks’ duration in the summer of 1873, which we spent in central France and Germany.  He had been seriously ill, and was suffering from severe mental depression.  For this he was ordered abroad by his physician, Sir A. Clark, to which step he offered a stubborn resistance.  With Mrs. Huxley’s approval, and being myself quite in the mood for a holiday, I volunteered to wrestle with him, and succeeded, holding out as an inducement a visit to the volcanic region of the Auvergne with Scrope’s classical volume, which we both knew and admired, as a guide book.

We started on July 2nd, I loaded with injunctions from his physician as to what his patient was to eat, drink, and avoid, how much he was to sleep and rest, how little to talk and walk, etc., that would have made the expedition a perpetual burthen to me had I not believed that I knew enough of my friend’s disposition and ailments to be convinced that not only health but happiness would be our companions throughout.  Sure enough, for the first few days, including a short stay in Paris, his spirits were low indeed, but this gave me the opportunity of appreciating his remarkable command over himself and his ever-present consideration for his companion.  Not a word or gesture of irritation ever escaped him; he exerted himself to obey the instructions laid down; nay, more, he was instant in his endeavour