My dear Lankester,
I cannot attend the Council meeting on the 29th. I have a meeting of the Trustees of the British Museum to-day, and to be examined by a Committee on Monday, and as the sudden heat half kills me I shall be fit for nothing but to slink off to Eastbourne again.
However, I do hope the Council will be very careful what they say or do about the immature fish question. The thing has been discussed over and over again ad nauseam, and I doubt if there is anything to be added to the evidence in the blue-books.
The idee fixe of the British public, fishermen, M.P.'s and ignorant persons generally is that all small fish, if you do not catch them, grow up into big fish. They cannot be got to understand that the wholesale destruction of the immature is the necessary part of the general order of things, from codfish to men.
You seem to have some very interesting things to talk about at the
Royal Institution.
Do you see any chance of educating the white corpuscles of the human race to destroy the theological bacteria which are bred in parsons?
Ever yours very faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
3 Jevington Gardens, Eastbourne, May 19, 1889.
My dear Donnelly,