I always thought Nucula the key to the Lamellibranchs, and I am very glad you have come to that conclusion on such much better evidence.

I am, dear Dr. Pelseneer, yours very faithfully,

T.H.  Huxley.

[Towards the end of June he went for a week to Salisbury, taking long walks in the neighbourhood, and exploring the town and cathedral, which he confessed himself ashamed never to have seen before.

He characteristically fixes its date in his memory by noting that the main part of it was completed when Dante was a year old.]

The White Hart, Salisbury, June 22, 1890.

My dear Donnelly,

Couldn’t stand any more London, so bolted here yesterday morning, and here I shall probably stop for the next few days.

I have been trying any time the last thirty years to see Stonehenge, and this time I mean to do it.  I should have gone to-day, but the weather was not promising, so I spent my Sunday morning in Old Sarum—­that blessed old tumulus with nine (or was it eleven?) burgesses that used to send two members to Parliament when I was a child.  Really you Radicals are of some use after all!

Poor old Smyth’s death is just what I expected, though I did not think the catastrophe was so imminent. [Warrington Wilkinson Smyth (1817-1890), the geologist and mineralogist.  In 1851 he was appointed Lecturer on Mining and Mineralogy at the Royal School of Mines.  After the lectureships were separated in 1881, he retained the former until his death.  He was knighted in 1887.]

Peace be with him; he never did justice to his very considerable abilities, but he was a good fellow and a fine old crusted Conservative.

I suppose it will be necessary to declare the vacancy and put somebody in his place before long.

I learned before I started that Smyth was to be buried in Cornwall, so there is no question of attending at his funeral.

I am the last of the original Jermyn Street gang left in the school now—­Ultimus Romanorum!

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H.  Huxley.

[This trip was taken by way of a holiday after the writing of an article, which appeared in the “Nineteenth Century” for July 1890.  It was called “The Lights of the Church and the Light of Science,” and may be considered as written in fulfilment of the plan spoken of in the letter to Mr. Clodd (above).  Its subject was the necessary dependence of Christian theology upon the historical accuracy of the Old Testament; its occasion, the publication of a sermon in which, as a counterblast to “Lux Mundi”, Canon Liddon declared that accuracy to be sanctioned by the use made of the Old Testament by Jesus Christ, and bade his hearers close their ears against any suggestions impairing the credit of those Jewish Scriptures which have received the stamp of His Divine authority.