There is a chance of your getting early salmon yet.  I wrote to decline the post on Friday, but on Saturday evening the Home Secretary sent a note asking to see me yesterday.  As he had re-opened the question, of course I felt justified in stating all the pros and cons of the case as personal to myself and my rather complicated official position...He entered into the affair with a warmth and readiness which very agreeably surprised me, and he proposes making such arrangements as will not oblige me to have anything to do with the weirs or the actual inspection.  Under these circumstances the post would be lovely—­if I can hold it along with the other things.  And of his own motion the Home Secretary is going to write to Lord Spencer about it to see if he cannot carry the whole thing through.

If this could be managed, I could get great things done in the matter of fish culture and fish diseases at South Kensington, if poor dear X.’s rattle trappery could be turned to proper account, without in any way interfering with the work of the School.

At any rate, my book stands not to lose, and may win—­the innocence of the dove is not always divorced from the wisdom of the sarpent. [Sketch of the “Sarpent.”]

To Lord Farrer.

4 Marlborough Place, January 18, 1881.

My dear Farrer,

I have waited a day or two before thanking you for your very kind letter, in the hope that I might be able to speak as one knowing where he is.

But as I am still, in an official sense, nowhere, I will not delay any longer.

I had never thought of the post, but the Home Secretary offered it to me in a very kind and considerate manner, and after some hesitation I accepted it.  But some adjustment had to be made between my master, the Lord President, and the Treasury; and although everybody seems disposed to be very good to me, the business is not yet finally settled.  Whence the newspapers get their information I don’t know—­but it is always wrong in these matters.

As you know, I have had a good apprenticeship to the work [He had already served on two Fishery Committees, 1862 and 1864-5.]—­and I hope to be of some use; of the few innocent pleasures left to men past middle life—­the jamming common-sense down the throats of fools is perhaps the keenest.

May we do some joint business in that way!

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H.  Huxley.

To his eldest son.

February 14, 1881.

I have entered upon my new duties as Fishery Inspector, but you are not to expect salmon to be much cheaper just yet.

My colleague and I have rooms at the Home Office, and I find there is more occupation than I expected, but no serious labour.

Every now and then I shall have to spend a few days in the country, holding inquiries, and as salmon rivers are all in picturesque parts of the country, I shall not object to that part of the business.