[The following letters with reference to the long unfinished memoir on "Spirula" for the "Challenger" reports tell their own story. Huxley was very glad to find some competent person to finish the work which his illness had incapacitated him from completing himself. It had been a burden on his conscience; and now he gladly put all his plates and experience at the disposal of Professor Pelseneer, though he had nothing written and would not write anything. He had no wish to claim even joint authorship for the completed paper; when the question was first raised, he desired merely that it should be stated that such and such drawings were made by him; but when Professor Pelseneer insisted that both names should appear as joint authors, he consented to this solution of the question.]
Hodeslea, September 17, 1893.
Dear Mr. Murray [Now K.C.B. Director of the "Reports of the
'Challenger'.">[,
If the plates of Spirula could be turned to account a great burthen would be taken off my mind.
Professor Pelseneer is every way competent to do justice to the subject; and he has just what I needed, namely another specimen to check and complete the work; and besides that, the physical capacity for dissection and close observation, of which I have had nothing left since my long illness.
Will you be so good as to tell Professor Pelseneer that I shall be glad to place the plates at his disposal and to give him all the explanations I can of the drawings, whenever it may suit his convenience to take up the work?
Nothing beyond mere fragments remained of the specimen.
I am, yours very faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
I return Pelseneer's letter.