What they call a “funicular railway” hauls you up a gradient of 1 in 1 3/4 from the station on the shore in ten minutes.  At first the sensation on looking down is queer, but you soon think nothing of it.  The air is very fine, the weather lovely, the feeding unexceptionable, and the only drawback consists in the “javelins,” as old Francis Head used to call them—­stinks of such wonderful crusted flavour that they must have been many years in bottle.  But this is a speciality of all furrin parts that I have ever visited.

I am very well and extremely lazy so far as my head goes—­legs I am willing to use to any extent up hill or down dale.  They wanted me to go and speechify at Keighley in the middle of October, but I could not get permission from the authorities.  Moreover, I really mean to keep quiet and abstain even from good words (few or many) next session.  My wife joins with me in love to Mrs. Donnelly and yourself.

She thought she had written, but doubts whether in the multitude of her letters she did not forget.

Ever yours,

T.H.  Huxley.

[From Glion also he writes to Sir M. Foster:—­]

I have been doing some very good work on the Gentians in the interests of the business of being idle.

[The same subject recurs in the next letter:—­]

Hotel Righi Vaudois, Glion, Switzerland, September 21, 1887.

My dear Hooker,

I saw in the “Times” yesterday the announcement of Mr. Symond’s death.  I suppose the deliverance from so painful a malady as heart-disease is hardly to be lamented in one sense; but these increasing gaps in one’s intimate circle are very saddening, and we feel for Lady Hooker and you.  My wife has been greatly depressed in hearing of Mrs. Carpenter’s fatal disorder.  One cannot go away for a few weeks without finding some one gone on one’s return.

I got no good at the Maderaner Thal, so we migrated to our old quarters at Arolla, and there I picked up in no time, and in a fortnight could walk as well as ever.  So if there are any adhesions they are pretty well stretched by this time.

I have been at the Gentians again, and worked out the development of the flower in G. purpurea and G. campestris.  The results are very pretty.  They both start from a thalamifloral condition, then become corollifloral, G. purpurea at first resembling G. lutea and G. campestris, an Ophelia, and then specialise to the Ptychantha and Stephanantha forms respectively.

In G. campestris there is another very curious thing.  The anthers are at first introrse, but just before the bud opens they assume this position [sketch] and then turn right over and become extrorse.  In G. purpurea this does not happen, but the anthers are made to open outwards by their union on the inner side of the slits of dehiscence.

There are several other curious bits of morphology have turned up, but I reserve them for our meeting.