LINNEAN SOCIETY OP LOIfDON". 39 



on the Elements of Comparative Anatomy,' so intimately related 

 to his Croonian Lecture, in which he dealt the death-blow to 

 the vertebral theory of the skull as formulated by Oken and 

 Owen ; his 'Anatomy of Vertebrated Animals,' still a standard 

 work of reference ; and his 'Anatomy of Invertebrate Animals,' 

 the introductory chapters in which are models of philosophic 

 penmanship and scholarly research. 



Apart from his advanced writings, Huxley produced others of 

 a more general and elementary character ; and of these his ' Ele- 

 mentary Physiology ' and ' Physiography, an Introduction to the 

 Study of Nature,' have probably done more for elementary 

 scientific education than any other works of their class; his ' Cray- 

 fish, an Introduction to the Study of Zoology,' has furnished 

 the world with an ideal Biological treatise ; his ' Elementary 

 Biology' is the prototype of the numerous laboratory treatises 

 of the didactic order ; while his ' Man's Place in Nature,' perhaps 

 his finest work on a single scientific subject, is a classic which it 

 would seem impossible to better. 



Huxley's association with the work of Darwin and the estab- 

 lishment of the truth of the docti-ine ot" Evolution is now historical. 

 Of bis philosophic and polemical essays, this is not the place to 

 treat. In him the world loses the man who, with Darwin and 

 Spenser, revolutionized thought, by direct application of principles 

 deduced from the study of organic nature ; and the man to whom 

 is due, more than to all others, the placing of the study of Science 

 on a level with that of the Humanities, of History, and Philosophy, 

 and the establishment of rational methods in the teaching of 

 Biology. 



Our late Fellow was a man of exceptional breadth of culture and 

 of profound sympathy with his fellows. Much of his life's work 

 was concentrated upon the " gemeine Leute," with the avowed 

 intention of doing w hat lay within his power to ameliorate their 

 condition, and to rescue from their ranks those by nature qualified 

 for higher walks of life ; and there is reason to believe that in 

 this he was largely acting under impressions received in the early 

 portion of his career, while as yet a medical practitioner among 

 the poor of London. He graduated M.B. of Loudon in 1815. He 

 was a Fellow and a President of the E-oyal and Geoiotjical 

 Societies, and a President of the British Association. As j^resi- 

 dent of the Ethnological Society, he was the real founder of the 

 Anthropological Institute. When President of the Greological 

 Society, he worked out a theory of the Zoic Period of the Earth's 

 History which, as to years, was in marked contrast to that of his 

 distinguished contemporary. Lord Kelvin (then Sir W. Thomson) , 

 and it is interesting to note that, during the last years of Huxley's 

 life, the work of Perry led up to the conclusion that on the 

 physical basis the age of the planet has been underestimated, and 

 that the greater time demanded by palaeontologista may well have 

 elapsed. 



