Geanies, Ross-shire: November 7, 1885.
The two Ethels left this afternoon minus their luggage and luncheon, which arrived at the station with the dog-cart just as the train was leaving. Pathetic it was to see their hungry eyes looking at the neat luncheon basket from the train windows! We are all well here. L—— is here. He has now fired his first hundred cartridges, and has nothing to show but a brace of cats which he took a pot shot at in the trees.
November 12.
I am now playing at the last day in the old house, and doing so in the library all by myself. L—— left this morning, and we all leave to-morrow. Gerald now leads me from one room to another, and after opening the door and looking round each says, 'All gone!'
I have somewhat relieved the monotony of my solitary life by buying a horse. This you will no doubt think is a purchase well timed and thus worthy of a philosopher. For six months at least I shall have to pay for his keep, and never have a chance of a single bit of use for him all that time. Yet, strange to say, I think I have made a good bargain.
Nov., Edinburgh.—Dined at Dalmeny. We met Mr. and Mrs. Gladstone, and also Lieutenant Greely, of Arctic fame.
Nov., London.—Dinner with the F. Galtons, and met the Leckys and other nice people. Mr. Galton says the study of statistics fascinates him just as skating on thin ice does some people—it's so perilous.
Returning for a little while to the scientific work of these years, one may say that they were chiefly devoted to the more philosophical side of his work as a naturalist.
'Animal Intelligence,' 'Mental Evolution in Animals,' appeared respectively in 1881 and 1883, and are works designed to prove that the law of evolution is universal, and applies to the mind of man as well as to his bodily organisation.
Mr. Romanes read widely and observed much, and no one less deserved the charge of writing without observing, or of being a 'paper philosopher.' Both these books abound in stories of animals, and are full of interest for anyone caring at all for 'beasts,' quite apart from the special object of the books.