With our united kindest regards,

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H.  Huxley.

I return next Monday.

[Two letters of thanks follow, one at the beginning of the year to Mr. Herbert Spencer for the gift of a very fine photograph of himself; the other, at the end of the year, to Mr. (afterwards Sir John) Skelton, for his book on Mary Queen of Scots and the Casket Letters.

As to the former, it must be premised that Mr. Spencer abhorred exaggeration and inexact talk, and would ruthlessly prick the airy bubbles which endued the conversation of the daughters of the house with more buoyancy than strict logic, a gift which, he averred, was denied to woman.]

4 Marlborough Place, January 25, 1882.

My dear Spencer,

Best thanks for the photograph.  It is very good, though there is just a touch of severity in the eye.  We shall hang it up in the dining-room, and if anybody is guilty of exaggerated expressions or bad logic (five womenkind habitually sit round that table), I trust they will feel that that eye is upon them.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H.  Huxley.

4 Marlborough Place, January 31, 1882.

My dear Skelton,

If I may not thank you for the book you have been kind enough to send me, I may at any rate wish you and Mrs. Skelton a happy New Year and many on ’em.

I am going to read your vindication of Mary Stuart as soon as I can.  Hitherto I am sorry to say I have classed her with Eve, Helen, Cleopatra, Delilah, and sundry other glorious —­s who have lured men to their destruction.

But I am open to conviction, and ready to believe that she blew up her husband only a little more thoroughly than other women do, by reason of her keener perception of logic.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H.  Huxley.

CHAPTER 2.14.

1883.

[The pressure of official work, which had been constantly growing since 1880, reached its highest point in 1883.  Only one scientific memoir was published by him this year, and then no more for the next four years. (Contributions to Morphology, Ichthyopsida, Number 2.  On the Oviducts of Osmerus; with remarks on the relations of the Teleostean with the Ganoid Fishes “Proceedings of the Zoological Society” 1883 pages 132-139).  The intervals of lecturing and examining were chiefly filled by fishery business, from which, according to his usual custom when immersed in any investigation, he chose the subject, “Oysters and the Oyster Question,” both for his Friday evening discourse at the Royal Institution on May 11, and for his course to Working Men between January 8 and February 12.

There are the usual notes of all seasons at all parts of England.  A deserted hotel at Cromer in January was uninviting.]

My windows look out on a wintry sea, and it is bitter cold.  Notwithstanding, a large number of the aquatic gentleman to whom I shall have the pleasure of listening, by and by, are loafing against the railings opposite, as only fishermen can loaf.