I enclose the Report [The Annual Report of the Examiners in Physiology under the Science and Art Department, which, being still an Examiner he had to sign.] and have nothing to suggest except a quibble at page 4.  If you take a stick in your hand you may feel lots of things and determine their form, etc., with the other end of it, but surely the stick is properly said to be insensible.  Ditto with the teeth.  I feel very well with mine (which are paid for) but they are surely not sensible?  Old Tomes once published the opinion that the contents of the dentine tubules were sensory nerves, on the ground of our feeling so distinctly through our teeth.  He forgot the blind man’s stick.  Indeed the reference of sensation to the end of a stick is one of the most interesting of psychological facts.

It is extraordinary how those dogs of examinees return to their vomit.  Almost all the obstinate fictions you mention are of a quarter of a century date.  Only then they were dominant and epidemic—­now they are sporadic.

I wish Pasteur or somebody would find some microbe with which the rising generation could be protected against them.

We shall have to rearrange the Examination business—­this partner having made his fortune and retiring from firm.  Think over what is to be done.

Ever yours,

T.H.  Huxley.

You don’t happen to grow gentians in your Alpine region, do you?

[Of his formal responsibility for the examinations he had written earlier in the year:—­]

Wells House, Ilkley, June 15, 1886.

My dear Donnelly,

I think it is just as well that you could not lay your hands on ink, for if you had you would only have blacked them. (N.B.  This is a goak.)

You know we resolved that it was as well that I should go on as Examiner (unpaid) this year.  But I rather repent me of it—­for although I could be of use over the questions, I have had nothing to do with checking the results of the Examination except in honours, and I suspect that Foster’s young Cambridge allies tend always to screw the standard up.

I am inclined to think that I had much better be out of it next year.  The attempt to look over examination papers now would reduce the little brains I have left to mere pulp—­and, on the other hand, if there is any row about results, it is not desirable that I should have to say that I have not seen the answers.

When I go you will probably get seven devils worse than the first—­but that it is not the fault of the first devil.

I am picking up here wonderfully in spite of the bad weather.  It rained hard yesterday and blew ditto—­to-day it is blowing dittoes—­but there is sunshine between the rain and squalls.

I hope you are better off.  What an outlandish name “Tetronila.”  I don’t believe you have spelt it right.  With best regards to Mrs. Donnelly and my godson.

Ever yours,