We then went to the lecture, where Sir William took the chair, and introduced me to the audience with such a glowing oration that it would have startled you. (It quite astonished me.) The audience being thus led to suppose that I was one of the brightest of all bright lights, received me very warmly; I got enthusiastic, discarded my notes, and swam along in the most magnificent style even for me, which, you know, is the highest praise I can bestow upon myself. I spoke for an hour and a half; at the end the people applauded so, I felt really awfully sorry you were not there. There seems to be a cruel fate preventing you from witnessing my performances. The vote of thanks was proposed by Professor McKendrick. I was met by another storm of applause; I began to feel quite overcome. But I said a few words with all becoming humility, and then Sir William summed up. Here is an affectionate outburst to his mother, written about this time: 'When thou art feeble, old, and grey, My healthy arm shall be thy stay, My mother.' _When._ But you are not yet either so feeble, old, or grey as to make me imagine that you have lost a needful prop in the absence of your 'peerless son!' And I am sure you are not more proud of him than he is of you. With your eyes as bright as the bright starlight, and your face as ruddy as the morning, I am glad you are _my_ mother. In 1881 Mr. Romanes was at Garvock, Perthshire. And he was for a short time also at Oban, working with his friend Professor Ewart on _Echinodermata_, and their joint paper was made the 'Croonian Lecture.'[28] This was the last bit of work on marine zoology, excepting a trifling research on the smelling power of anemones, at which he worked with Mr. Walter Herries Pollock, who had been tempted to make a temporary excursion from the paths of literature into the walks of science. They contributed a joint paper to the Linnean Society on indications of smell in Actinia, and it is greatly to be feared, such is the frivolity of literary men, that Mr. Pollock regarded the whole affair as a very good joke. The following letters describe the work of the years 1880 and 1881. The summer of 1879 and 1880 had been spent at Westfield. _From G. J. Romanes to C. Darwin_, _Esq._ By this post I return you Häckel's essay on Perigenesis. Although I have kept it so long, I have only just read it, as you said there was no need to return it at any particular time.