What I desire to do is to write a review of it, which will bring it into some notice on this side of the water, and this I hope to do before long.  If I do not it will be, you well know, from no want of inclination, but simply from lack of time.

In any case, as soon as I have been able to study the book carefully, you shall have my honest opinion about all points.

I am glad your journey has yielded so good a scientific harvest, and especially that you found my “Oceanic Hydrozoa” of some use.  But I am shocked to find that you had no copy of the book of your own, and I shall take care that one is sent to you.  It is my first-born work, done when I was very raw and inexperienced, and had neither friends nor help.  Perhaps I am all the fonder of the child on that ground.

A lively memory of you remains in my house, and wife and children will be very glad to hear that I have news of you when I go home to dinner.

Keep us in kindly recollection, and believe me,

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H.  Huxley.

July 16, 1867.

My dear Haeckel,

My wife and I send you our most hearty congratulations and good wishes.  Give your betrothed a good account of us, and for we hope in the future to entertain as warm a friendship for her as for you.  I was very glad to have the news, for it seemed to me very sad that a man of your warm affections should be surrounded only by hopeless regrets.  Such surroundings inflict a sort of partial paralysis upon one’s whole nature, a result which is, to me, far more serious and regrettable than the mere suffering one undergoes.

The one thing for men, who like you and I stand pretty much alone, and have a good deal of fighting to do in the external world, is to have light and warmth and confidence within the four walls of home.  May all these good things await you!

Many thanks for your kind invitation to Jena.  I am sure my wife would be as much pleased as I to accept it, but it is very difficult for her to leave her children.

We will keep it before us as a pleasant possibility, but I suspect you and Madame will be able to come to England before we shall reach Germany.

I wish I had rooms to offer you, but you have seen that troop of children and they leave no corner unoccupied.

Many thanks for the Bericht and the genealogical tables.  You seem, as usual, to have got through an immense amount of work.

I have been exceedingly occupied with a paper on the “Classification of Birds,” a sort of expansion of one of my Hunterian Lectures this year.  It has now gone to press, and I hope soon to be able to send you a copy of it.

Occupation of this and other kinds must be my excuse for having allowed so much longer a time to slip by than I imagined had done before writing to you.  It is not for want of sympathy, be sure, for my wife and I have often talked of the new life opening out to you.