I put all this clearly before Bence Jones yesterday, with the proviso that I could and would do nothing that should embarrass the Institution or himself.
If there is the least difficulty in supplying my place, or if the managers think I shall deal shadily with them by resigning before the expiration of my term, of course I go on. And I hope you all understand that I would do anything rather than put even the appearance of a slight upon those who were kind enough to elect me.
Ever yours,
T.H. Huxley.
[He found a substitute for 1868, the last year of the triennial course, in Dr. (now Sir) Michael Foster. Of his final lectures in 1867 he used to tell a story against himself.]
In my early period as a lecturer, I had very little confidence in my general powers, but one thing I prided myself upon was clearness. I was once talking of the brain before a large mixed audience, and soon began to feel that no one in the room understood me. Finally I saw the thoroughly interested face of a woman auditor, and took consolation in delivering the remainder of the lecture directly to her. At the close, my feeling as to her interest was confirmed when she came up and asked if she might put one question upon a single point which she had not quite understood. "Certainly," I replied. "Now, Professor," she said, "is the cerebellum inside or outside the skull?" ("Reminiscences of T.H. Huxley" by Professor H. Fairfield Osborn).
[Dr. Foster used to add maliciously, that disgust at the small impression he seemed to have made was the true reason for the transference of the lectures.]
CHAPTER 1.22.
1868.
[In 1868 he published five scientific memoirs, amongst them his classification of birds and "Remarks upon Archaeopteryx Lithographica" ("Proceedings of the Royal Society" 16 1868 pages 243-248). This creature, a bird with reptilian characters, was a suggestive object from which to popularise some of the far-reaching results of his many years' labour upon the morphology of both birds and reptiles. Thus it led to a lecture at the Royal Institution, on February 7, "On the Animals which are most nearly intermediate between Birds and Reptiles."