i895. HUXLEY. 125 



useful as his " physiography " was deplorable. The text-books of 

 vertebrate and invertebrate anatomy remain the most brilliant and 

 logical expositions of comparative anatomy in existence. 



P. Chalmers Mitchell. 



III. — As Paleontologist and Geologist. 



Huxley himself records that when he received the offer of the 

 vacant Professorship of Natural History in the Royal School of 

 Mines, in connection with the post of Naturalist to the Geological 

 Survey, in 1854, he informed the Director-General (Sir Henry de la 

 Beche) that his acceptance of the office was merely provisional, since 

 he felt no interest in fossils. He was an ardent physiologist, and the 

 purely morphological facts of palseontology did not at that time appeal 

 much to his mind. In a lecture delivered at the Royal Institution in 

 the following year, he even regarded the study of fossils as hopeless 

 in seeking for confirmation of the doctrine of evolution. " There is," 

 he concluded, "no real parallel between the successive forms assumed 

 in the development of the life of the individual at present, and those 

 which have appeared at different epochs in the past. , . , The 

 particular argument supposed to be deduced from the heterocercality 

 of the ancient fishes is based on an error, the evidence from this 

 source, if worth anything, tending in the opposite direction." 



Within a year, however, the new Professor began to be deeply 

 absorbed in his pursuits, and soon co-operated with Salter in the 

 determination of fossils for the Geological Survey. The mere 

 systematic work of defining and naming genera and species never 

 appeared to interest him, even to the end; but the determination of 

 the structure of the extinct forms of life, with a discussion of their 

 affinities on the basis of his own results, provided long exercise for his 

 almost unrivalled powers. By 1876 he had accomplished so much 

 that the Geological Society of London awarded him its highest and 

 most coveted distinction, the Wollaston Medal, in recognition of his 

 services to geological science. His latest contributions to the study 

 of fossils were read before the Royal and Geological Societies of 

 London so recently as 1887. 



Huxley's earliest notes, published in association with Salter, 

 were a technical description of some supposed fish-shields from the 

 Downton Sandstone, near Ludlow (1855), and a discussion of the 

 affinities of the Devonian Crustacean, Himantopterus or Slimonia (18^6). 

 He also contributed to the Geological Society's Journal an indepen- 

 dent description of the Carboniferous Crustacean, Pygocephalns cooperi 

 (1857). The anomalous structure of the supposed fish-shields from 

 the Downton Sandstone, however, appears to have particularly 

 excited his interest ; and this led to a series of investigations of the 

 early Palaeozoic fishes, which by 1861 completely revolutionised 

 existing knowledge of the subject. In a paper pubHshed by the 



