Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H.  Huxley.

P.S.—­Yes—­Mr. Gladstone has dug up the hatchet.  We shall see who gets the scalps.

By the way, you have not referred to plants, which are a stronghold for you.  What is the good of use-inheritance, say, in orchids?

[The interests which had formerly been divided between biology and other branches of science and philosophy, were diverted from the one channel only to run stronger in the rest.  Stagnation was the one thing impossible to him; his rest was mental activity without excessive physical fatigue; and he felt he still had a useful purpose to serve, as a friend put it, in patrolling his beat with a vigilant eye to the loose characters of thought.  Thus he writes on September 29 to Sir J. Hooker:—­]

I wish quietude of mind were possible to me.  But without something to do that amuses me and does not involve too much labour, I become quite unendurable—­to myself and everybody else.

Providence has, I believe, specially devolved on Gladstone, Gore, and Co. the function of keeping “’ome ’appy” for me.

I really can’t give up tormenting ces droles.

However, I have been toiling at a tremendously scientific article about the “Aryan question” absolutely devoid of blasphemy.

[This article appeared in the November number of the “Nineteenth Century” ("Collected Essays” 7 271) and treats the question from a biological point of view, with the warning to readers that it is essentially a speculation based upon facts, but not assuredly proved.  It starts from the racial characteristics of skull and stature, not from simply philological considerations, and arrives at a form of the “Sarmatian” theory of Aryan origins.  And for fear lest he should be supposed to take sides in the question of race and language, or race and civilisation, he remarks:—­]

The combination of swarthiness with stature above the average and a long skull, confer upon me the serene impartiality of a mongrel.

The Grand Hotel, Eastbourne, August 12, 1890.

My dear Evans,

I have read your address returned herewith with a great deal of interest, as I happen to have been amusing myself lately with reviewing the “Aryan” question according to the new lights (or darknesses).

I have only two or three remarks to offer on the places I have marked A and B.

As to A, I would not state the case so strongly against the probabilities of finding pliocene man.  A pliocene Homo skeleton might analogically be expected to differ no more from that of modern men than the Oeningen Canis from modern Canes, or pliocene horses from modern horses.  If so, he would most undoubtedly be a man—­genus Homo—­even if you made him a distinct species.  For my part I should by no means be astonished to find the genus Homo represented in the Miocene, say the Neanderthal man with rather smaller brain capacity, longer arms and more movable great toe, but at most specifically different.