SIR JOSEPH HOOKER LANKESTER. 587 



had detected Huxleys abilities and secured for him the post on the 

 Rattlesnake in 1847, just as eight years earlier he had used his in- 

 fluence to secure for Hooker a similar position on the Erebus. 



These four men, Lyell, Darwin, Hooker, and Huxley, were the 

 actual " begetters " and the chief propagators, both in the more 

 restricted world of science and among the larger public, of the vivi- 

 fying doctrine of organic evolution. The close personal ties which 

 linked the first three were strengthened by the marriage of Joseph 

 Hooker in August, 1851, to Frances Henslow, eldest daughter of the 

 Cambridge professor of botany, the man who turned Charles Darwin 

 to a scientific career. Huxley came to them, to use Hooker's own 

 simile. " as steel to a magnet," and was soon admitted to the closest 

 intimacy, giving them and receiving from them the warmest affection. 

 A tie of fellowship between Hooker, Darwin, and Huxley was that 

 they were all three " old salts " and had the training and " the knowl- 

 edge of men " given by service in the royal navy. Huxley also met 

 and sealed a close alliance with John Tyndall at the Ipswich gather- 

 ing of the British association in 1851, and so brought that physical 

 philosopher into close and permanent relationship with the Dar- 

 winian " nucleus." He, too, brought Herbert Spencer into constant 

 relation with the group; whilst young John Lubbock (afterwards 

 Lord Avebury), who was a neighbor of Darwin's, now settled at 

 Down, in Kent, became, both by his scientific work in zoology, botany, 

 and geology and by his personal charm, a welcome associate. 



In 1864 Huxley, Hooker, George Busk (surgeon and naturalist), 

 Spencer, and Tyndall, who had been close friends of Huxley's ever 

 since his return from the voyage of the Rattlesnake, together with 

 Frankland, the chemist, Hirst, the mathematician, old colleagues and 

 allies of Tyndall, and Sir John Lubbock and Spottiswoode, friends 

 of them all, founded the " X Club," which met once a month for 

 dinner, its purpose being, as Mr. Leonard Huxley tells us — 



to afford a definite meeting point for a few friends who were in danger of drift- 

 ing apart in the flood of busy lives. But it was in itself a representative group 

 of scientific men destined to play a large part in the history of science. Five 

 of them (there were nine in all) received the Royal medal of the Royal Society; 

 three the Copley medal, the highest scientific award; one, the Rumford; six 

 were presidents of the British Association, three were Associates of the Insti- 

 tute of France; and from amongst them the Royal Society chose a secretary, a 

 foreign secretary, a treasurer, and three successive presidents. * * * They 

 included representatives of half a dozen branches of science — mathematics, 

 physics, philosophy, chemistry, botany, and biology; and all were animated by 

 similar ideas of the high function of science and of the great Society which 

 should be the chief representative of science in this country. 



Not unnaturally the club exercised, during its 28 years of existence 

 (it expired in 1892, owing to the dispersal of its original members 

 and the decision not to elect new ones), a great influence on the prog- 



