My dear Darwin

I am horridly loth to say that I cannot do anything you want done—& partly for that reason & partly because we have been very busy here with some new arrangements during the last day or two, I did not at once reply to your note¹

I am afraid, however, I cannot undertake any sort of new work— In spite of working like a horse (or if you prefer it like an ass) I find myself scandalously in arrear—and I shall get into terrible hot water if I do not clear off some things that have been hanging about me for months & years

If you will send me up the specimens, however, I will ask Flower² (whom I see constantly) to examine them for you— The examination will be no great trouble and I am ashamed to make a fuss about doing it—but I have sworn a big oath to take no fresh work, great or small, until certain things are done—

I wake up in the morning with somebody saying in my ear, A, is not done, & B, is not done & C is not done & D, is not done &c &c.—and a feeling like a fellow whose duns are all in the street waiting for him—

By the way you ask me what I am doing now—so I will just enumerate some of the A, B, & C; aforesaid—

A. Editing Lectures on Vertebrate skull & bringing them out in the Medical Times³

B. Editing & rewriting Lectures on Elementary Physiology—just delivered here & reported as I went along—⁴

C. Thinking of my course of 24 Lectures on the Mammalia at Coll. Surgeons in next spring & making investigations bearing on the same.⁵

D. Thinking of & working at a Manual of Comparative Anatomy (may it be d——d) which I have had in hand these seven years⁶

E. Getting heaps of remains of new Labyrinthodonts from the Glasgow coal field which have to be described⁷

F. working at a memoir on Glyptodon based on a new & almost entire specimen at the College of Surgeons⁸

G. preparing a new Decade upon Fossil fishes for this place⁹

H. knowing that I ought to have written long ago a description of a lot of most interesting Indian fossils sent to me by Oldham—¹⁰

I. being blown at by Hooker for doing nothing for the Natural History Review¹¹

K. being bothered by sundry Editors—just to write articles “which you know you can knock off in a moment”

L. Consciousness of having left unwritten letters which ought to have been written long ago especially to C. Darwin—

M. General worry & botheration   Ten or twelve people taking up my time all day— about their own affairs—

N. O. P. Q R. S T. U. V. W. X. Y. Z

Societies—

Clubs—

Dinners— Evening parties & all the apparatus for wasting time called ‘Society’

Colenso-ism & botheration about Moses—¹²

Finally pestered to death in public & private because I am supposed to be what they call a “Darwinian”!

If that is not enough I could exhaust the Greek alphabet for heads in addition

I am very glad to hear that Wyman thinks well of my book—as he is very competent to judge—¹³ I hear it is republished in America—but I suppose I shall get nothing out of it.—¹⁴

The man who does the virulence in the Edinburgh & Anthropological is a jackal of Owen’s by the name of C. Carter Blake—¹⁵ The same whom Falconer shewed up in the Elephant paper¹⁶

As a return for the impertinence against Rolleston & myself which that absurd Anthropological Society sanctioned—I sent them back the Diploma of Honorary Fellowship—by means of which after I had refused to join them in any other way they had lugged me in—¹⁷—

Owen is damning himself as fast as is good for us— The Aye-Aye wind up is the greatest bosh I ever read—¹⁸

Lyell is not as bold as I should have wished. But it is a great thing for a man past sixty to have eaten as much of his leek as he has¹⁹

My wife is better than I have seen her for years—but going to increase the population again in September I am sorry to say—²⁰ We have been grieved to get poor accounts of you occasionally   I hope M^rs Darwin is well

Ever yours faithfully | T H Huxley