My dear Stokes—

I am quite puzzled by the sarcastic tone of the last paragraph of your note of yesterday.¹ I am not aware that I ever abused referees for keeping papers—or attacked the secretary for not stirring them up— I do recollect once getting a resolution of Council that referees should be stirred up, passed;² but that has so long become a dead letter that you cannot be thinking of it.

The fact is I have not been at all remiss in ‘getting on with my own’ paper— The artist is keeping me waiting & I have stirred him up over & over again—³ Perhaps you will try your hand now.

Now it is my turn to have a little chaff, as we have taken to that line— Don’t you think that “As Falconer : Busk " excluded : omitted” is a good rule of three sum—?;⁴ and that our worthy & usually very accurate secretary,⁵ who could make the one mistake in writing, might (without too great sin) be supposed to have made the other in reading—?

Ever yours very faithfully | T. H. Huxley

P.S. The above problem in proportion is of course of a private character—