PROFESSOR TYNDALL. 637 



All or some part of that period, when North America and Eurojje 

 were for the most part covered with glacial ice, intervenes be- 

 tween the time of man's undoubted existence the time of the 

 Cannstadt, Cro-Magnon, and Furfooz races and the beginning 

 of the time figured by these savants. 



PROFESSOR TYNDALL. 



By Prof. T. H. HUXLEY. 



PERSONAL, like national, history has its epochs ; brief sea- 

 sons, during which life is fuller than usual, and the present 

 is more obviously pregnant with the future than at other times. 

 For me, the year 1851 constitutes such an epoch. In November, 

 1850, I had returned to England after an absence, which not only 

 extended over a considerable period of time, but covered the 

 critical age of transition from adolescence to full manhood. In 

 the course of these four years, largely spent in little-explored 

 regions of the other side of the globe, I had been in the world as 

 well as round it, and stored up varied experiences of things and 

 men. Moreover, I had done some bits of scientific work which, as 

 I was pleasantly surprised to learn on my return, were better 

 thought of than I had, I will not say expected, but ventured to 

 hope, when I sent them home ; and they provided me with an 

 introduction to the scientific society of London. I found the new 

 world, into which I thus suddenly dropped, extremely interesting, 

 and its inhabitants kindly disposed toward the intruder. The 

 veterans were civil, the younger men cordial ; and it speedily 

 dawned upon my mind that I had found the right place for my- 

 self, if I could only contrive to stop in it. As time went on, I 

 acted upon this conviction ; and, fortune greatly aiding effort, the 

 end of it was thirty odd years of pretty hard toil, partly as an 

 investigator and teacher in one branch of natural knowledge, and 

 partly as a half-voluntary, half-compelled man-of-all-work for 

 the scientific household in general. 



But the year 1851 has other and even stronger claims to be 

 counted an era in my existence. In the course of the twelve 

 months after my return, I made acquaintances which rapidly 

 ripened into friendships, knit with such strong bonds of mutual 

 affection and mutual respect, that neither the ordinary vicissi- 

 tudes of life, nor those oppositions in theory and practice which 

 will arise among men of mental constitutions diverse in every- 

 thing but strength of will, nor, indeed, any power short of al- 

 mighty Death, has been able to sunder them from that time to 

 this. And among those friends who, as the years rolled on, 



