There was to have been another meeting of the University Court yesterday, but the Principal was suffering so much from an affection of the lungs that I adjourned the meeting till to-morrow.  Did I tell you that I carried all my resolutions about improving the medical curriculum?  Fact, though greatly to my astonishment.  To-morrow we go in for some reforms in the arts curriculum, and I expect that the job will be tougher.

I send you a couple of papers—­“Scotsman,” with a very good leading article, and the “Aberdeen Herald” also with a leading article, which is as much favourable as was to be expected...The Websters are making me promise to bring you and one of the children here next autumn.  They are wonderfully kind people.

March 2.

My work here finishes to-day.  There is a meeting of the Council at one o’clock, and before that I am to go and look over laboratories and collections with sundry Professors.  Then there is the supper at half-past eight and the inevitable speeches, for which I am not in the least inclined at present.  I went officially to the College Chapel yesterday, and went through a Presbyterian service for the first time in my life.  May it be the last!

Then to lunch at Professor Struthers’ and back here for a small dinner-party.  I am standing it all well, for the weather is villainous and there is no getting any exercise.  I shall leave here by the twelve o’clock train to-morrow.

[On August 2 he delivered an address on “Joseph Priestley” ("Collected Essays” 3 1) at Birmingham, on the occasion of the presentation of a statue of Priestley to that town.  The biography of this pioneer of science and of political reform, who was persecuted for opinions that have in less than a century become commonplaces of orthodox thought, suggested a comparison between those times and this, and evoked a sincere if not very enthusiastic tribute to one who had laboured to better the world, not for the sake of worldly honour, but for the sake of truth and right.

As the way to Birmingham lay through Oxford, he was asked by Professor Ray Lankester, then a Fellow of Exeter College, if he could not break his journey there, and inspect the results of his investigations on Lymnaeus.  The answer was as follows:—­]

We go to Birmingham on Friday by the three o’clock train, but there is no chance of stopping at Oxford either going or coming, so that unless you bring a Lymnaeus or two (under guise of periwinkles for refreshment) to the carriage door I shall not be able to see them.

[The following letters refer both to this address on Priestley, and to the third of the important addresses of this year, that “On the Hypothesis that Animals are Automata, and its History” ("Collected Essays” 1 199, see also below).  The latter was delivered at Belfast before the British Association under Tyndall’s presidency.  It appears that only a month before, he had not so much as decided upon his subject—­indeed, was thinking of something quite different.