visited Rolleston at Oxford. The knowledge of Oxford life gained from
this and a later visit led him to write:--]

The more I see of the place the more glad I am that I elected to stay in
London. I see much to admire and like; but I am more and more convinced
that it would not suit me as a residence.

[Two more important points remain to be mentioned among the occupations
of the year. In January Huxley was elected Secretary of the Geological
Society, and with this office began a form of administrative work in the
scientific world which ceased only with his resignation of the
Presidency of the Royal Society in 1885.

Part of the summer Huxley spent in the North. On August 3 he went to
Lamlash Bay in Arran. Here Dr. Carpenter had, in 1855, discovered a
convenient cottage on Holy Island--the only one, indeed, on the
island--well suited for naturalists; the bay was calm and suitable both
for the dredge and for keeping up a vivarium. He proposed that either
the Survey should rent the whole island at a cost of some 50 pounds
sterling, or, failing this, that he would take the cottage himself, if
Huxley would join him for two or three seasons and share the expense.
Huxley laid the plan before Sir R. Murchison, the head of the Survey,
who consented to try the plan for a course of years, during three months
in each year. "But," [he added,] "keep it experimental; for there are no
USEFUL fisheries such as delight Lord Stanley." [Here, then, with an
ascent of Goatfell for variety on the 21st, a month was passed in
trawling, and experiments on the spawning of the herring appear to have
been continued for him during the winter in Bute.

On the 29th Huxley left Lamlash for a trip through central and southern