As the autumn of 1882 slipped into winter and the pressure of events and duties following his father's death slowly eased, Francis was forced to confront his own future. Which way should he turn? There were hints coming out of Oxford University that he would be successful if he applied for the newly vacant Chair of Botany. He confided to Nain Ruck, to whom more than anyone he could tell his innermost thoughts and worries:

His dilemma was that Michael Foster, head of the highly successful Cambridge School of Physiology, had dangled before him the prospect that there might be a Readership suitable for him in Cambridge. Given that neither the Chair nor the Readership were firm offers, and cautious by nature – to his family Frank was always sound and reliable rather than adventurous – he plumped for Cambridge. There he would be close to his mother, who had recently moved to the city, his siblings, and in familiar surroundings. Almost immediately, he felt he had made the wrong decision as Foster's plans were overtaken by changes to the rules for the medical examinations; these made it necessary for the lecture course to become more zoological than it had previously been, so ruling out any significant contribution from Francis. In another letter to Nain, he wrote: