Ɛpsilon

From T. H. Huxley   18 January 1875

4 Marlborough Place

Jny 18th 1875

My dear Darwin

I quite agree with your letter about vivisection as a matter of right & justice in the first place, & secondly as the best method of taking the wind out of the enemy’s sails1   I will communicate with Burdon Sanderson2 & see what can be done.

My reliance as against that ‘foolish fat scullion’3 & her fanatical following is not in the wisdom & justice of the House of Commons but in the large number of Fox-hunters therein— If Physiological Experimentation is put down by law—hunting fishing & shooting against which a much better case can be made out will soon follow

Have you seen Mivarts wriggle?4 Of course he could be easily exposed but I doubt if he is worth more powder & shot— What say you?

I have had a horrid influenza & gone deaf in one ear—I am afraid permanently—but I am picking up again

The Litchfields5 were with us last night & I was glad to hear good news of all at Down

Ever | Yours very faithy | T H Huxley

1
In his letter to Huxley of 14 January 1875, CD had suggested pre-empting Frances Power Cobbe’s campaign against vivisection by encouraging physiologists and biologists to put forward their own petition on the subject.
3
Huxley quotes from Tristram Shandy (Sterne 1760–7, 5: 45).
4
St George Jackson Mivart had published a letter in the Academy, 16 January 1874, p. 66, signing himself ‘The Quarterly Reviewer of 1874’, responding to Huxley’s remarks on his anonymous reviews in the Academy, 2 January 1875, pp. 16–18 (see letter from J. D. Hooker, 3 January [1875] and n. 3). In the letter, he reiterated his statement that CD had kept back his (CD’s) views on the bestiality of the origins of the human species when he (CD) published Origin, and repeated his regret at the misapprehension of his remarks about George Howard Darwin.

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-9823,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-9823