You see my great object is to set going something which can be worked in every school in the country in a thorough and effectual way, and set an example of the manner in which I think this sort of introduction to science ought to be managed.
Unless this can be done I would rather not embark in a project which will involve much labour, worry, and interruption to my regular line of work.
I met Mr. [illegible] last night, and discussed the subject briefly with him.
Ever yours very faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
I enclose a sort of rough programme of the kind of thing I mean, cut up from a project of instruction for a school about which I am now busy. The managers might like to see it. But I shall be glad to have it returned.
[These lectures were repeated in November at South Kensington Museum, as the first part of a threefold course to women on the elements of physical science, and the "Times" reporter naively remarks that under the rather alarming name of Physiography, many of the audience were no doubt surprised to hear an exceedingly simple and lucid description of a river-basin. Want of leisure prevented him from bringing out the lectures in book form until November 1877. When it did appear, however, the book, like his other popular works, had a wide sale, and became the forerunner of an immense number of school-books on the subject.
As President of the Geological Society, he delivered an address ("Collected Essays" 8 305), at the anniversary meeting, February 19, upon the "Geological Reform" demanded by the considerations advanced by the physicists, as to the age of the earth and the duration of life upon it. From the point of view of biology he was ready to accept the limits suggested, provided that the premises of Sir William Thomson's (Now Lord Kelvin.) argument were shown to be perfectly reliable; but he pointed out a number of considerations which might profoundly modify the results of the isolated causes adduced; and uttered a warning against the possible degradation of "a proper reverence for mathematical certainty" into "a superstitious respect for all arguments arrived at by process of mathematics." (See "Collected Essays" 8 Introduction page 8.)
At the close of the year, as his own period of office came to an end, it was necessary to select a new president of the Geological. He strongly urged Professor (afterwards Sir Joseph) Prestwich to stand, and when the latter consented, a few weeks, by the way, before his marriage was to take place, replied:—]
Jermyn Street, December 16, 1869.