I was glad to hear that F. had stood his fortnight's holiday so well; three weeks might have knocked him up!
[On the same day, September 26, he wrote the letter to Dr. Dohrn, mentioned above, answering two inquiries—one as to arrangements for exhibiting at the Fisheries Exhibition to be held in London the following year, the other as to whether England would follow the example of Germany and Italy in sending naval officers to the Zoological Station at Naples to be instructed in catching and preserving marine animals for the purposes of scientific research.
[With respect to question Number 2, I am afraid my answer must be less hopeful. So far as the British Admiralty is represented by the ordinary British admiral, the only reply to such a proposition as you make that I should expect would be that he (the British admiral, to wit) would see you d—d first. However, I will speak of the matter to the Hydrographer, who really is interested in science, at the first opportunity.
[For many years before this, and until the end of his life, there was another side to his correspondence which deserves mention.
I wish that more of the queer letters, which arrived in never-failing streams, had been preserved. A favourite type was the anonymous letter. It prayed fervently, over four pages, that the Almighty would send him down quick into the pit, and was usually signed simply "A Lady." Others came from cranks of every species: the man who demonstrated that the world was flat, or that the atmosphere had no weight—an easy proof, for you weigh a bottle full of air; then break it to pieces, so that it holds nothing; weigh the pieces, and they are the same weight as the whole bottle full of air! Or, again, that the optical law of quality between the angle of incidence and the angle of reflection is a delusion, whence it follows that all our established latitudes are incorrect, and the difference of temperature between Labrador and Ireland, nominally on the same parallel, is easily accounted for. Then came the suggestions of little pieces of work that might so easily be undertaken by a man of Huxley's capacity, learning, and energy. Enormous manuscripts were sent him with a request that he would write a careful criticism of them, and arrange for their publication in the proceedings of some learned society or first-rate magazine. One of the most delightful came this year. A doctor in India, having just read "John Inglesant," begged Professor Huxley to do for Science what Mr. Shorthouse had done for the Church of England. As for the material difficulties in the way of getting such a book written in the midst of other work, the ingenious doctor suggested the use of a phonograph driven by a gas-engine. The great thoughts dictated into it from the comfort of an armchair, could easily be worked up into novel shape by a collaborator.
India, again, provided the following application of 1885, made in all seriousness by a youthful Punjaubee with scientific aspirations, who feared to be forced into the law. After an intimate account of his life, he modestly appeals for a post in some scientific institution, where he may get his food, do experiments three or four hours a day, and learn English. Latterly his mental activity had been very great:—"I have been contemplating," he says, "to give a new system of Political Economy to the world. I have questioned, perhaps with success, the validity of some of the fundamental doctrines of Herbert Spencer's synthetic philosophy," and so on.
Another remarkable communication is a reply-paid telegram from the
States, in 1892, which ran as follows:—
Unless all reason and all nature have deceived me, I have found the truth. It is my intention to cross the ocean to consult with those who have helped me most to find it. Shall I be welcome? Please answer at my expense, and God grant we all meet in life on earth.
Another, of British origin this time, was from a man who had to read a paper before a local Literary Society on the momentous question, "Where are we?" so he sent round a circular to various authorities to reinforce his own opinions on the six heads into which he proposed to divide his discourse, namely:
Where are we in Space?