HUXLEY'S LIFE AND WORK. 347 



more complicated than Huxley supposed. The Mongoloid races extend 

 now from China to Lapland; but in Huxley's opinion they never pene- 

 trated much further west, and never reached our islands. "I am un- 

 able," he says, "to discover any ground for believing that a Lapp element 

 has ever entered into the population of these islands." It is true that we 

 have not, so far as I know, anything which amounts to proof. We 

 know, however, that all the other animals which are associated with the 

 Lapps once inhabited Great Britain. Was man the only exception? I 

 think not, more especially when we find, not only the animals of Lap- 

 land, but tools and weapons identical with those of the Lapps. I must 

 not enlarge on this, and perhaps I may have an opportunity of laying my 

 views on the subject more fully before the Society; but I may be allowed 

 to indicate my own conclusion, namely, that the races to which Huxley 

 refers are amongst the latest arrivals in our islands; that England was 

 peopled long before its separation from the mainland, and that after the 

 English Channel was formed, successive hordes of invaders made their 

 way across the sea, but as they brought no women, or but few, with 

 them, they exterminated the men, or reduced them to slavery, and 

 married the women. Thus through their mothers our countrymen re- 

 tain the strain of previous races, and hence, perhaps, we differ so much 

 from the populations across the silver streak. 



Summing up this side of Huxley's work, Sir M. Foster has truly said 

 that "whatever bit of life he touched in his search, protozoan, polyp, 

 mollusc, crustacean, fish, reptile, beast and man — and there were few 

 living things he did not touch — he shed light on it, and left his mark. 

 There is not one, or hardly one, of the many things which lie has written 

 which may not be read again to-day with pleasure and with profit, and, 

 not once or twice only in such a reading, it will be felt that the progress 

 of science has given to words written long ago a. strength and meaning 

 even greater than that which they seemed to have when first they were 

 read." 



In 1870 Huxley became a member of the first London School Board, 

 and though his health compelled him to resign early in 1872, it would 

 be difficult to exaggerate the value of the service he rendered to London 

 and, indeed, to the country generally. 



The education and discipline which he recommended were: 



(1) Physical training and drill. 



(2) Household work or domestic economy, especially for girls. 



(3) The elementary laws of conduct. 



(4) Intellectual training, reading, writing and arithmetic, elemen- 

 tary science, music and drawing. 



He maintained that 'no boy or girl should leave school without pos- 

 sessing a grasp of the general character of science, and without having 

 been disciplined more or less in the methods of all sciences.' 



