of the Auvergne. The care and company
of so good a friend made the crowning ingredient in a most successful
prescription. And when both had retired from official life a new
interest in common sprang up through Huxley's incursion into botany.
While recruiting his health in the high Alps, his interest was aroused
by the Gentians, and he wrote a valuable paper on their morphology
and distribution. This interest continued itself into the making of
a rock-garden in his Eastbourne home, where, in his spare hours,
he proceeded to put into happy practice Candide's famous maxim,
"_Cultivons notre jardin_," and drew from this occupation the simile
of the wild chalk down and the cultivated garden in his Romanes
Lecture to illustrate the contrast between the cosmic process and the
social organism.

Hooker often sent his friend plants from his own garden, sometimes
banteringly including one which would "flourish in any neglected
corner."

An unclouded intimacy of friendship lasted to the end, and it was
Hooker who received the last letter written by his friend.

Close as a brother, too, and claiming the name of brother in
affectionate adoption, was John Tyndall, radiant in genial warmth
and high spirits. They, too, were at one in thoughts, sympathies, and
aims; they travelled together, especially in the Alps, where Tyndall
mainly carried out the investigation of certain problems in relation
to the glaciers which Huxley had suggested to him, and, being "a
masterful man and over-generous," insisted that the resulting paper on
glaciers should bear both their names.

Tyndall came to the School of Mines as Professor of Physics in 1859 at
his friend's instigation, and for nine years they were, as colleagues,
in daily contact, and indeed were not far separated when Tyndall
succeeded Faraday at the Royal Institution in Albemarle Street.

Tyndall, who remained a bachelor till late in middle life, always
found a warm corner beside his friend's hearth. From the earliest days
of the household in the little house at Waverley Place he was admitted
to the inner circle of a lively friendship by Mrs. Huxley also, that
keen judge of character, and to the children ranked as a kind of
unofficial uncle. On New Year's Day he was chief among the two or
three intimates who were bidden here, having no domestic hearth of
their own, Herbert Spencer and Hirst being the other "regulars," and
later Michael Foster.

As the two men both had ready pens and