We are all "ignoramuses" more or less—and cannot reproach one another. If there were any sign of conceit in your letter, you would not get this reply.
On the contrary, it pleases me. Your observations are quite accurate and clearly described—and to be accurate in observation and clear in description is the first step towards good scientific work.
You are seeing just what the first workers with the microscope saw a couple of centuries ago.
Get some such book as Carpenter's "On the Microscope" and you will see what it all means.
Are there no science classes in Southampton? There used to be, and I suppose is, a Hartley Institute.
If you want to consult books you cannot otherwise obtain, take this to the librarian, give him my compliments, and say I should be very much obliged if he would help you.
I am, yours very faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
[Great was Huxley's astonishment when he learned in reply that his correspondent was a casual dock labourer, and had but scanty hours of leisure in which to read and think and seek into the recesses of nature, while his means of observation consisted of a toy microscope bought for a shilling at a fair. Casting about for some means of lending the man a helping hand, he bethought him of the Science and Art Department, and wrote on December 30 to Sir J. Donnelly:—]
The Department has feelers all over England—has it any at Southampton? And if it has, could it find out something about the writer of the letters I enclose? For a "casual docker" they are remarkable; and I think when you have read them you will not mind my bothering you with them. (I really have had the grace to hesitate.)