Letter from T.H. Huxley [Thomas Henry Huxley] [to George Maw]

Information

Scope & content: Written from Jermyn Street, London. Manuscript

He has found a series of illustrations of Maw’s Labyrinthodont fossil; Mr Thomson [James Thomson, engineer] of Glasgow brought him a series of Labyrinthodont remains from his local coalfields, including several skulls, detached lower jaws and other parts indistinguishable from Maw’s; these parts throw light on a jaw brought from Canada by Principal Dawson [John William Dawson, principal of McGill University, Canada]; all the specimens were shown on Wednesday evening to the Geological Society and caused excitement; he will not have time to describe the fossils before the next session, but may send a note about them to ‘Nature’; Mr Etheridge [Robert Etheridge, a colleague at the Museum of Practical Geology] tells him that Maw mentioned Mr Baugh’s [Thomas Baugh, palaeontological collector who collected fish spines and teeth from the Carboniferous] collection to him, and he would be glad to purchase it for the Museum [Museum of Practical Geology], but he must not interfere as long as the British Museum is in the field, as government museums should not bid against one another [part of the collection ended up at the British Museum of Natural History]; he will speak with Mr Waterhouse [George Robert Waterhouse, keeper of the mineralogical department at the British Museum of Natural History] on the subject. With envelope