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I. 



Professor Huxley : from the Point' of View of 



a Disciple. 



AMONG the various estimates of Mr. Huxley's life and work 

 that will have appeared before the present article can possibly 

 see the light, I venture to hope that there is still room for a brief account 

 of him as he appears to a disciple. For the pupil and assistant of a 

 great teacher has, within a certain limited field, the best possible 

 opportunities of judging of his master's work and character, especial!}- 

 when, as in the present instance, a considerable lapse of time has 

 served to furnish something like the due perspective. 



To the general public who think of Huxley chiefly as a merciless 

 iconoclast, a keen controversialist, an incomparable popular exponent 

 of science, the fact that he contributed certain papers to learned 

 societies, wrote such and such text-books, and for thirty years lectured 

 on the elements of Biology to a handful of students at the Royal 

 School of Mines, are matters of little interest or moment. Never- 

 theless, it is obviously upon his technical and non-popular writings 

 and upon the character of his teaching that his reputation as a man 

 of science must stand or fall. 



Judged by his original contributions to science, there can be no 

 doubt that Huxley's performance falls far short of his capabilities, 

 and that there is hardly a man of first-class ability among his con- 

 temporaries who has not produced more. Leuckart, Koelliker, 

 Haeckel, Gegenbaur, are the names one naturally connects with his, 

 and it must be frankly conceded that there is not one among them 

 who has not left a deeper mark upon Zoology than he, or whose 

 works are not more frequently referred to by the professional zoologist. 

 Three of his researches may fairly be called classical : that on the 

 Hydrozoa, in which he propounded the wide-reaching generalisation 

 that the ectoderm and endoderm of polypes and sea-anemones corre- 

 spond with the two primary germ-layers in the embryos of the higher 

 animals ; that on the fossil Ganoids ; and that on the morphology of 

 the vertebrate skull, in which he demolished the fanciful " vertebral 

 theory," which, however fruitful in its first conception, had become a 

 positive hindrance to the progress of philosophical anatomy. Of less 

 magnitude are his papers on the classification of birds, on the cray- 

 fishes, on the anatomy of the Australian mud-fish, and on the Canidae, 



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