T.H.  Huxley.

Thomas Common, Esq.

Hodeslea, August 31, 1894.

Dear Professor Seth,

I have come to a stop in the issue of my essays for the present, and I venture to ask your acceptance of the set which I have desired my publishers to send you.

I hope that at present you are away somewhere, reading novels or otherwise idling, in whatever may be your pet fashion.

But some day I want you to read the “Prolegomena” to the reprinted
Romanes Lecture.

Lately I have been re-reading Spinoza (much read and little understood in my youth).

But that noblest of Jews must have planted no end of germs in my brains, for I see that what I have to say is in principle what he had to say, in modern language.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H.  Huxley.

[The following letters with reference to the long unfinished memoir on “Spirula” for the “Challenger” reports tell their own story.  Huxley was very glad to find some competent person to finish the work which his illness had incapacitated him from completing himself.  It had been a burden on his conscience; and now he gladly put all his plates and experience at the disposal of Professor Pelseneer, though he had nothing written and would not write anything.  He had no wish to claim even joint authorship for the completed paper; when the question was first raised, he desired merely that it should be stated that such and such drawings were made by him; but when Professor Pelseneer insisted that both names should appear as joint authors, he consented to this solution of the question.]

Hodeslea, September 17, 1893.

Dear Mr. Murray [Now K.C.B.  Director of the “Reports of the
’Challenger’."],

If the plates of Spirula could be turned to account a great burthen would be taken off my mind.

Professor Pelseneer is every way competent to do justice to the subject; and he has just what I needed, namely another specimen to check and complete the work; and besides that, the physical capacity for dissection and close observation, of which I have had nothing left since my long illness.

Will you be so good as to tell Professor Pelseneer that I shall be glad to place the plates at his disposal and to give him all the explanations I can of the drawings, whenever it may suit his convenience to take up the work?

Nothing beyond mere fragments remained of the specimen.

I am, yours very faithfully,

T.H.  Huxley.

I return Pelseneer’s letter.

Hodeslea, September 30, 1893.

Dear Professor Pelseneer,

I send herewith (by this post) a full explanation of the plates of Spirula (including those of which you have unlettered copies).  I trust you will not be too much embarrassed by my bad handwriting, which is a plague to myself as well as to other people.

My hope is that you will be good enough to consider these figures as materials placed in your hands, to be made useful in the memoir on Spirula, which I trust you will draw up, supplying the defects of my work and checking its accuracy.