Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley — Volume 1Huxley, Thomas Henry
Science
Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley — Volume 1
Huxley, Thomas Henry
Huxley, Thomas Henry, 1825-1895; Naturalists -- England -- Biography
I used at one time to write a good deal for that Review, principally the
Quarterly notice of scientific books. But I never write for the Reviews
now, as original work is much more to my taste. The articles you refer
to are not mine, as, indeed, you rightly divined. The only considerable
book I have translated is Kolliker's Histology--in conjunction with Mr.
Busk, an old friend of mine. All translation and article writing is
weary work, and I never do it except for filthy lucre. Lecturing I do
not like much better; though one way or another I have to give about
sixty or seventy a year.
Now then, I think that is enough about my "Ich." You shall have a
photographic image of him and my wife and child as soon as I can find
time to have them done...
1 Eldon Place, Broadstairs, September 5, 1858.
My dear Hooker,
I am glad Mrs. Hooker has found rest for the sole of her foot. I
returned her Tyndall's letter yesterday.
Wallace's impetus seems to have set Darwin going in earnest, and I am
rejoiced to hear we shall learn his views in full, at last. I look
forward to a great revolution being effected. Depend upon it, in natural
history, as in everything else, when the English mind fully determines
to work a thing out, it will do it better than any other.
I firmly believe in the advent of an English epoch in science and art,
which will lick the Augustan (which, by the bye, had neither science nor
art in our sense, but you know what I mean) into fits. So hooray, in the
first place, for the Genera plantarum. I can quite understand the need
of a new one, and I am right glad you have undertaken it. It seems to me
to be in all respects the sort of work for you, and exactly adapted to
your environment at Kew. I remember you mentioned to me some time ago
that you were thinking of it.
I wish I could even hope that such a thing would be even attempted in
the course of this generation for animals.
But with animal morphology in the state in which it is now, we have no
terminology that will stand, and consequently concise and comparable
definitions are in many cases impossible.
If old Dom. Gray [John Edward Gray (1800-1875) appointed Keeper of the
Zoological Collections in the British Museum in 1840.) were but an
intelligent activity instead of being a sort of zoological whirlwind,
what a deal he might do. And I am hopeless of Owen's comprehending what
classification means since the publication of the wonderful scheme which
adorns the last edition of his lectures.
As you say, I have found this a great place for "work of price." I have
finished the "Oceanic Hydrozoa" all but the bookwork, for which I must
have access to the B. M. Library--but another week will do him. My notes
are from eight to twelve years old, and really I often have felt like
the editor of somebody else's posthumous work.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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