I do not know that there is anywhere a collection arranged according to Provinces of Geographical Distribution.  It would be a great credit to Cambridge to set the example of having one.

If I had a free hand in Cambridge or anywhere else I should build (A) a Museum, open to the public, and containing three strictly limited and selected collections; one morphologically, one geographically, and one stratigraphically arranged; and (B) a series of annexes arranged for storage and working purposes to contain the material which is of no use to any but specialists.  I am convinced that this is the only plan by which the wants of ordinary people can be supplied efficiently, while ample room is afforded for additions to any extent without large expense in building.

On the present plan or no plan, Museums are built at great cost, and in a few years are choked for want of room.

If you have the opportunity, I wish you would explain that I gave no opinion as to what might or might not be expedient under present circumstances at Cambridge.  I do not want to seem meddlesome.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H.  Huxley.

Don’t forget Cayley.

N.B.—­As my meaning seems to have been misunderstood I wish, if you have the chance, you would make it clear that I do not want three brick and mortar museums—­but one public museum—­containing a threefold collection of typical forms, a biological Trinity in Unity in fact.

It might conciliate the clerics if you adopted this illustration.  But as your own, mind.  I should not like them to think me capable of it.

[However, even Ilkley was not an infallible cure.  Thus he writes to Sir M. Foster:—­]

May 17.

I am ashamed of myself for not going to town to attend the Government Grant Committee and Council, but I find I had better stop here till the end of the month, when I must return for a while anyhow.

I have improved very much here, and so long as I take heaps of exercise every day I have nothing to complain of beyond a fit of blue devils when I wake in the morning.

But I don’t want to do any manner of work, still less any manner of play, such as is going on in London at this time of year, and I think I am wise to keep out of it as long as I can.

I wish I knew what is the matter with me.  I feel always just on the verge of becoming an absurd old hypochondriac, and as if it only wanted a touch to send me over.

May 27.

...The blue devils worry me far less than they did.  If there were any herd of swine here I might cast them out altogether, but I expect they would not go into blackfaced sheep.

I am disposed to stop not more than ten days in London, but to come back here and bring some work with me.  In fact I do not know that I should return yet if it were not that I do not wish to miss our usual visit to Balliol, and that my Spanish daughter is coming home for a few months...