THE LATE PROFESSOR HUXLEY.
[TO TEE EDITOR OP THE " SPECTATOR."] SIR,—Your paper will no doubt be presently full of memories of Professor Huxley. I should like, with your permission, to add one while his loss is so fresh with us. Some time ago I received a letter from an unknown correspondent asking me for an account of a parishioner of mine, a casual labourer in a large dockyard. I found out the man, and gathered that he was socially of the labouring class,—politically a socialist and theologically a freethinker ; but that all his spare time was devoted to original research, aided by a sixpenny magnifying- glass. So I reported accordingly, and in a few days received a letter from Professor Huxley thanking me for my exhaus- tive report, and saying that this man had sent him a paper containing a most vivid and scientifically accurate description of the multiplication by fission of a lowly organism observed by him in an infusion of his own preparation. The Professor's object in writing was to ask me how best such a man could be helped, I being at his special request the intermediary. So I suggested in the mean- while a microscope and a few scientific books. In the course of a few days I received a splendid achromatic compound microscope and some books, which I duly handed over to my friend, telling him it was from an unknown hand. " Ah," be said, "I know who that must be, it can be no other than the greatest of living scientists, it is just like him to help a tyro." I need hardly say how well and truly my friend has profited by the Professor's generosity; still more, by the thought of his interest and sympathy. It was Professor Huxley's wish, I know, to try to find him a post in a marine laboratory, or some similarly congenial occupation. But this plan, I fear, will never now be carried out. Still, the fact remains, of true genius, though obscure, having been discovered and fostered by him whose death has caused so great a blank in the roll of great English savants.—I am, Sir, &c, F. G. MONTAGU POWELL.
Bt. Luke's Vicarage, Southampton.
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