Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H.  Huxley.

I forgot to say that I am mending as fast as I can expect to do.

CHAPTER 3.4.

1888.

[It was not till June 23 that Huxley was patched up sufficiently by the doctors for him to start for the Engadine.  His first stage was to Lugano; the second by Menaggio and Colico to Chiavenna; the third to the Maloja.  The summer visitors who saw him arrive so feeble that he could scarcely walk a hundred yards on the level, murmured that it was a shame to send out an old man to die there.  Their surprise was the greater when, after a couple of months, they saw him walking his ten miles and going up two thousand feet without difficulty.  As far as his heart was concerned, the experiment of sending him to the mountains was perfectly justified.  With returning strength he threw himself once more into the pursuit of gentians, being especially interested in their distribution and hybridism, and the possibility of natural hybrids explaining the apparent connecting links between species.  No doubt, too, he felt some gratification in learning from his friend Mr. (now Sir W.) Thiselton Dyer, that the results he had already obtained in pursuing this hobby had been of real value:—­

Your important paper “On Alpine Gentians” (writes the latter) has begun to attract the attention of botanists.  It has led Baillon, who is the most acute of the French people, to make some observations of his own.

At the Maloja he stayed twelve weeks, but it was not until nearly two months had elapsed that he could write of any decided improvement, although even then his anticipations for the future were of the gloomiest.  The “secret” alluded to in the following letter is the destined award to him of the Copley medal:—­]

Hotel Kursaal, Maloja, Ober Engadine, August 17, 1888.

My dear Foster,

I know you will be glad to hear that, at last, I can report favourably of my progress.  The first six weeks of our stay here the weather was cold, foggy, wet, and windy—­in short, everything it should not be.  If the hotel had not been as it is, about the most comfortable in Switzerland, I do not know what I should have done.  As it was, I got a very bad attack of “liver,” which laid me up for ten days or so.  A Brighton doctor—­Bluett by name, and well up to his work—­kindly looked after me.

With the early days of August the weather changed for the better, and for the last fortnight we have had perfect summer—­day after day.  I soon picked up my walking power, and one day got up to Lake Longhin, about 2000 feet up.  That was by way of an experiment, and I was none the worse for it, but usually my walks are of a more modest description.  To-day we are all clouds and rain, and my courage is down to zero, with praecordial discomfort.  It seems to me that my heart is quite strong enough to do all that can reasonably be required of it—­if all the rest of the machinery is in good order, and the outside conditions are favourable.  But the poor old pump cannot contend with grit or want of oil anywhere.