164 NATURAL SCIENCE. March, 



Considering Huxley's unrivalled capacity as a teacher, it is a 

 remarkable fact that he never founded a school. His influence on 

 contemporary zoology and zoologists was, as it could hardly fail to be, 

 profound, but it was exercised mainly by his writings and by the 

 magnetism of his strong individuality. His actual teaching was all 

 elementary, and there never issued from his laboratory that perpetual 

 succession of young investigators which makes the distinction of the 

 great German universities, and which, in England, we associate 

 especially with the names of Michael Foster, F. M. Balfour, and 

 Ray Lankester. In the teaching of his regular class Huxley spared 

 no pains and gave of his best, but when his duties were over he was 

 too much engrossed in his own investigations to care about being 

 worried with the difficulties and triumphs of the embryo researcher. I 

 once went to him with a question about the codfish's brain at a time 

 when he was working at some invertebrate group. " The cod's a 

 vertebrate animal, isn't it ? " he asked; "well, I don't know anything 

 at all about vertebrate animals." This answer was quite charac- 

 teristic ; his immersion in the work in which he was actually engaged 

 was so strong as to produce a complete want of interest — -at least, 

 during working hours — in anything else, and resulted in the fact that 

 nearly all the students who began the study of zoology under him 

 went elsewhere as soon as they began to feel their feet. 



The unbounded pains he took with his lectures were nowhere 

 better displayed than in the courses for working-men at Jermyn 

 Street. A course of half-a-dozen lectures would take months of 

 preparation : he neglected no point, however insignificant, slurred 

 over no difficulty, however apparently unimportant, and gave as much 

 thought and research to an audience of clerks and mechanics as he 

 would have given to one composed of the most distinguished men of 

 science. His books, " Man's Place in Nature " and " The Crayfish," 

 are both founded on courses of this sort, and serve to give some idea 

 of his notions of popular lecturing. And he certainly had his reward, 

 and proved conclusively that a thoroughly popular lecturer is not 

 necessarily the phrase-making poseur with whom we are all familiar. 

 Although he never hesitated to use technical language, nor spared 

 anatomical details when necessary, he was listened to, night after 

 night, by an audience having no previous knowledge of the subject, 

 with an attention that never flagged. 



In connection with his position as a teacher, some reference must 

 be made to his text-books. The " Lessons in Elementary Physio- 

 logy," " Introductory Primer," and " Physiography," are so well 

 known and so widely used that it is unnecessary to do more than 

 allude to them as models of scientific method and lucid exposition. 

 But " The Elements of Comparative Anatomy," " The Anatomy of 

 Vertebrated Animals," and " The Anatomy of Invertebrated Animals," 

 appeal only to the student and the teacher of zoology. The " Elements " 

 really consists of two books in one. The first part, on the classifica- 



