I have still to thank you, & that most warmly, for your admirable
“Lecture at Wood’s Hole.” It is not merely a pleasant reminder of my
meeting with you seven years ago, but one of the very best memorial
sketches of my father which have yet appeared, & so written as somehow
to succeed in touching one’s personal feelings beyond the ordinary.
Indeed if I had written to you immediately after my first reading of
it, what I wrote might have appeared a trifle exaggerated. So you will
forgive my apparent remissness in not acknowledging the receipt of it
before. I do hope you will allow me to quote from your lecture, in the
Life I am working upon—a long task, of which I am now somewhere about
the middle.
Will you also be kind enough to tell me to what precisely you refer
when you speak of my father’s forming a wrong generalisation about the
phylogeny of the horse? His views before or after his American visit
of 1876? I do not know enough of the subject first-hand.
Once more, let me thank you for your dear & sympathetic piece of work
& believe me
Sincerely yours,
(Signed) LEONARD HUXLEY.
[Illustration:
FRANCIS MAITLAND BALFOUR
]
FRANCIS MAITLAND BALFOUR
1851–1882
To Huxley and to Balfour, younger brother of Arthur Balfour, my first
and most inspiring teacher in comparative embryology, I dedicated my
work, “The Age of Mammals.” Balfour’s genius was beyond imitation, but
his pupils may follow the example of his ardent enthusiasm and his
genial way of living the life of science.