Did you not some time ago tell me that you considered the Y-shaped bone (so-called presphenoid) in the Pike to be the true basisphenoid? If so, let me know before lecture to-morrow, that I may not commit theft unawares. I have arrived at that conclusion myself from the anatomical relations of the bone in question to the brain and nerves. I look upon the proposition opisthotis = turtle's "occipital externe" = Perch's Rocher (Cuvier) as the one thing needful to clear up the unity of structure of the bony cranium; and it shall be counted unto me as a great sin if I have helped to keep you back from it. The thing has been dawning upon me ever since I read Kolliker's book two summers ago, but I have never had time to work it out. Ever yours faithfully, T.H. Huxley. [The following extracts from a letter to Hooker and a letter to Darwin describe the pressure of his work at this time.] 1863. My dear Hooker, ...I would willingly send a paper to the Linnean this year if I could, but I do not see how it is practicable. I lecture five times a week from now till the middle of February. I then have to give eighteen lectures at the College of Surgeons--six on classification, and twelve on the vertebrate skeleton. I might write a paper on this new Glyptodon, with some eighteen to twenty plates. A preliminary notice has already gone to the Royal Society. I have a decade of fossil fish in progress; a fellow in the country WILL keep on sending me splendid new Labyrinthodonts from the coal, and that d--d manual must come out. Ayez pitie de moi. T.H. Huxley. Jermyn Street, July 2, 1863. My Dear Darwin, I am horribly loth to say that I cannot do anything you want done; and partly for that reason and partly because we have been very busy here with some new arrangements during the last day or two, I did not at once reply to your note. I am afraid, however, I cannot undertake any sort of new work. In spite of working like a horse (or if you prefer it, like an ass), I find myself scandalously in arrear, and I shall get into terrible hot water if I do not clear off some things that have been hanging about me for months and years. If you will send me up the specimens, however, I will ask Flower (whom I see constantly) to examine them for you. The examination will be no great trouble, and I am ashamed to make a fuss about it, but I have sworn a big oath to take no fresh work, great or small, until certain things are done. I wake up in the morning with somebody saying in my ear, "A is not done, and B is not done, and C is not done, and D is not done," etc., and a feeling like a fellow whose duns are all in the street waiting for him. By the way, you ask me what I am doing now, so I will just enumerate some of the A, B, and C's aforesaid. A. Editing lectures on Vertebrate skull and bringing them out in the "Medical Times."