We are both very glad to be at home again, and trust we may be allowed to enjoy our own house for a while. But, oh dear, the air is not Malojal! not even at Hempstead, whither I walked yesterday, and the pump labours accordingly. I found the first part of the fifth edition of the Text-book among the two or three hundredweight of letters and books which had accumulated during four months. Gratulire! By the way, South Kensington has sent me some inquiry about Examinations, which I treat with contempt, as doubtless you have a duplicate. Ever yours very faithfully, T.H. Huxley. [On October 25 he announces his return to Sir Joseph Hooker, and laments his loss of vigour at the sea-level:--] Hames won't let me stay here in November, and I think we shall go to Brighton. Unless on the flat of my back, in bed, I shall not have been at home a month all this year. I have been utterly idle. There was a lovely case of hybridism, Gentiana lutea and G. punctata, in a little island in the lake of Sils; but I fell ill and was confined to bed just after I found it out. It would be very interesting if somebody would work out Distribution five miles round the Maloja as a centre. There are the most curious local differences. You asked me to send you a copy of my obituary of Darwin. So I put one herewith, though no doubt you have seen it in the "Proceedings of the Royal Society." I should like to know what you think of 17 to 27. If ever I am able to do anything again I will enlarge on these heads. [In these pages of the Obituary Notice ("Proceedings of the Royal Society" 44 Number 269) he endeavours:--] to separate the substance of the theory from its accidents, and to show that a variety, not only of hostile comments, but of friendly would-be improvements lose their raison d'etre to the careful student... It is not essential to Darwin's theory that anything more should be assumed than the facts of heredity, variation, and unlimited multiplication; and the validity of the deductive reasoning as to the effect of the last (that is, of the struggle for existence which it involves) upon the varieties resulting from the operation of the former. Nor is it essential that one should take up any particular position in regard to the mode of variation, whether, for example, it takes place per saltum or gradually; whether it is definite in character or indefinite. Still less are those who accept the theory bound to any particular views as to the causes of heredity or of variation.