[One more letter may perhaps be quoted as illustrating the clearness of vision in administrative matters which made it impossible for him to sit quietly by and see a tactical blunder being committed, even though his formal position might not seem to warrant his interference.  This is his apologia for such a step.]

December 16, 1886.

My dear Foster,

On thinking over this morning’s Committee work [Some Committee of the Royal Society.], it strikes my conscience that being neither President or Chairman nor officer I took command of the boat in a way that was hardly justifiable.

But it occurred to me that our sagacious —­ for once was going astray and playing into —­’s hands, without clearly seeing what he was doing, and I be thought me of “salus Societatis suprema lex,” and made up my mind to stop the muddle we were getting into at all costs.  I hope he was not disgusted nor you either.  X. ought to have cut in, but he did not seem inclined to do so.

I am clearly convinced it was the right thing to do—­anyhow.

Ever yours,

T.H.  Huxley.

[The chronicle of the year may fitly close with a letter from Ilkley to Dr. Dohrn, apropos of his recommendation of a candidate for a biological professorship.  The] “honest sixpence got by hard labour,” [refers to a tour in the Highlands which he had once taken with Dr. Dohrn, when, on a rough day, they were being rowed across Loch Leven to Mary Stuart’s castle.  The boatman, unable to make head single-handed against the wind, asked them each to take an oar; but when they landed and Huxley tendered the fare, the honest fellow gave him back two sixpences, saying, “I canna tak’ it:  you have wrocht as hard as I.”  Each took a coin; and Huxley remarked that this was the first sixpence he had earned by manual labour.  Dr. Dohrn, I believe, still carries his sixpence in memory of the occasion.]

Wells House, Ilkley, Yorkshire, December 1, 1886.

My dear Dohrn,

You see by my address that I am en retraite, for a time.  As good catholics withdraw from the world now and then for the sake of their souls—­so I, for the sake of my body (and chiefly of my liver) have retired for a fortnight or so to the Yorkshire moors—­the nearest place to London where I can find dry air 1500 feet above the sea, and the sort of uphill exercise which routs out all the unoxygenated crannies of my organism.  Hard frost has set in, and I had a walk over the moorland which would have made all the blood of the Ost-see pirates—­which I doubt not you have inherited—­alive, and cleared off the fumes of that detestable Capua to which you are condemned.  I should like to have seen the nose of one of your Neapolitan nobilissimes after half-an-hour’s exposure to the north wind, clear and sharp as a razor, which very likely looked down on Loch Leven a few hours ago.