I do not see any locality given along with the specimens. Can you supply it?
I have got together some very curious evidence of the wider range of variability of the Indian jackal, and the "fox" which your son has sent is the most extreme form in one direction I have met with.
I wish I could get some examples from the Bombay and Madras Presidencies and from Ceylon, as well as from Central India. Almost all I have seen yet are from Bengal.
Ever yours very faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
[Between the two lectures on the Dog, mentioned above, on April 9, Huxley delivered a Friday evening discourse, at the same place, "On the Coming of Age of the Origin of Species" ("Collected Essays" 2 227). Reviewing the history of the theory of evolution in the twenty-one years that had elapsed since the "Origin of Species" first saw the light in 1859, he did not merely dwell on the immense influence the "Origin" had exercised upon every field of biological inquiry.] "Mere insanities and inanities have before now swollen to portentous size in the course of twenty years." "History warns us that it is the customary fate of new truths to begin as heresies, and to end as superstitions." [There was actual danger lest a new generation should] "accept the main doctrines of the "Origin of Species" with as little reflection, and it may be with as little justification, as so many of our contemporaries, years ago, rejected them."
[So dire a consummation, he declared, must be prevented by unflinching criticism, the essence of the scientific spirit,] "for the scientific spirit is of more value than its products, and irrationally held truths may be more harmful than reasoned errors."
[What, then, were the facts which justified so great a change as had taken place, which had removed some of the most important qualifications under which he himself had accepted the theory? He proceeded to enumerate the] "crushing accumulation of evidence" [during this period, which had proved the imperfection of the geological record; had filled up enormous gaps, such as those between birds and reptiles, vertebrates and invertebrates, flowering and flowerless plants, or the lowest forms of animal and plant life. More: paleontology alone has effected so much—the fact that evolution has taken place is so irresistibly forced upon the mind by the study of the Tertiary mammalia brought to light since 1859, that] "if the doctrine of evolution had not existed, paleontologists must have invented it." [He further developed the subject by reading before the Zoological Society a paper "On the Application of the Laws of Evolution to the Arrangement of the Vertebrata, and more particularly of the Mammalia" ("Proceedings of the Zoological Society" 1880 pages 649-662). In reply to Darwin's letter thanking him for the "Coming of Age" ("Life and Letters" 3 24), he wrote on May 10:—]
My dear Darwin,
You are the cheeriest letter-writer I know, and always help a man to think the best of his doings.