My dear Foster, ...I forget whether in the notice of Hooker's work you showed me there was any allusion made to that remarkable account of the Diatoms in Antarctic ice, to which I once drew special attention, but Heaven knows where? Dyer perhaps may recollect all about the account in the "Flora Antarctica," if I mistake not. I have always looked upon Hooker's insight into the importance of these things and their skeletons as a remarkable piece of inquiry--anticipative of subsequent deep sea work. Best thanks for taking so much trouble about H--. Pray tell him if ever you write that I have not answered his letter only because I awaited your reply. He may think my silence uncivil... Ever yours, T.H. Huxley. To Sir J.D. Hooker. 4 Marlborough Place, December 29, 1887. Where is the fullest information about distribution of Coniferae? Of course I have looked at "Genera Plantarum" and De Candolle. I have been trying to make out whether structure or climate or paleontology throw any light on their distribution--and am drawing complete blank. Why the deuce are there no Conifers but Podocarpus and Widringtonias in all Africa south of the Sahara? And why the double deuce are about three-quarters of the genera huddled together in Japan and northern China? I am puzzling over this group because the paleontological record is comparatively so good. I am beginning to suspect that present distribution is an affair rather of denudation than migration. Sequoia! Taxodium! Widringtonia! Araucaria! all in Europe, in Mesozoic and Tertiary. [The following letters to Mr. Herbert Spencer were written as sets of proofs of his Autobiography arrived. That to Sir J. Skelton was to thank him for his book on "Maitland of Lethington," the Scotch statesman of the time of Queen Mary.] January 18, 1887. [The first part of this letter is given above.] My dear Spencer, I see that your proofs have been in my hands longer than I thought for. But you may have seen that I have been "starring" at the Mansion House... I am immensely tickled with your review of your own book. That is something most originally Spencerian. I have hardly any suggestions to make, except in what you say about the "Rattlesnake" work and my position on board. Her proper business was the survey of the so-called "inner passage" between the Barrier Reef and the east coast of Australia; the New Guinea work was a hors d'oeuvre, and dealt with only a small part of the southern coast.