As to the new volume, you shall have the refusal of it if you care to have it.  But I have my doubts about its acceptability to a French public which I imagine knows little about Bibliolatry and the ways of Protestant clericalism, and cares less.

These essays represent a controversy which has been going on for five or six years about Genesis, the deluge, the miracle of the herd of swine, and the miraculous generally, between Gladstone, the ecclesiastical principal of King’s College, various bishops, the writer of “Lux Mundi”, that spoilt Scotch minister the Duke of Argyll, and myself.

My object has been to stir up my countrymen to think about these things; and the only use of controversy is that it appeals to their love of fighting, and secures their attention.

I shall be very glad to have your book on “Experimental Evolution”.  I insisted on the necessity of obtaining experimental proof of the possibility of obtaining virtually infertile breeds from a common stock in 1860 (in one of the essays you have translated).  Mr. Tegetmeier made a number of experiments with pigeons some years ago, but could obtain not the least approximation to infertility.

From the first, I told Darwin this was the weak point of his case from the point of view of scientific logic.  But, in this matter, we are just where we were thirty years ago, and I am very glad you are going to call attention to the subject.

Sending a copy of the translation soon after to Sir J. Hooker, he writes:—­]

Hodeslea, Eastbourne, January 11, 1892.

My dear Hooker,

We have been in the middle of snow for the last four days.  I shall not venture to London, and if you deserve the family title of the “judicious,” I don’t think you will either.

I send you by this post a volume of the French translation of a collection of my essays about Darwinism and Evolution, 1860-76, for which I have written a brief preface.  I was really proud of myself when I discovered on re-reading them that I had nothing to alter.

What times those days were!  Fuimus.

Ever yours affectionately,

T.H.  Huxley.

[The same subject of experimental evolution reappears in a letter to Professor Romanes of April 29.  A project was on foot for founding an institution in which experiments bearing upon the Darwinian theory could be carried out.  After congratulating Professor Romanes upon his recent election to the Athenaeum Club, he proceeds:—­]

In a review of Darwin’s “Origin” published in the “Westminster” for 1860 ("Lay Sermons” pages 323-24), you will see that I insisted on the logical incompleteness of the theory so long as it was not backed by experimental proof that the cause assumed was competent to produce all the effects required. (See also “Lectures to Working Men” 1863 pages 146 and 147.) In fact, Darwin used to reproach me sometimes for my pertinacious insistence on the need of experimental verification.