128 NATURAL SCIENCE. August, 1895, 



butions to the progress of Vertebrate Palaeontology. His eagerness 

 to penetrate the deeper mysteries may perhaps have sometimes led 

 him astray ; while his superficial acquaintance with some subjects on 

 which he professed to make authoritative statements, exposed him to 

 the severe criticism which he occasionally merited and received from 

 Owen and other contemporaries. But his influence on progress 

 cannot be measured solely by his own writings. He inspired many 

 younger workers, by his personal example and advice, to follow the 

 same line of research ; and he left the Geological Survey well 

 equipped with an accomplished naturalist, who has worthily followed 

 in his footsteps. 



This constant study of fossils, and the intimate practical 

 acquaintance with them thus gained, could not fail to reverse entirely 

 Huxley's earlier judgment as to their bearing on the doctrine of 

 evolution. Thus it was that at York, in 1881, he could affirm before 

 the British Association that, if zoologists and embryologists had not 

 put forward the theory, the palaeontologists would have had to 

 invent it. 



The problems of Palaeontology naturally awakened some interest 

 in Geology, and Huxley found time to undertake the secretarial 

 duties of the Geological Society of London for a period of four years 

 from 1859 to 1862. He was then elected President of the same Society 

 for the years 1868-70, His only contributions to purely geological 

 subjects were three addresses, one as deputy-President in 1862, 

 the others as actual President in 1869 and 1870. The first is note- 

 worthy for two reasons. In it he proposed the term " homotaxis " 

 for the conception which is now familiar to every student ; he 

 perceived (with many of his contemporaries) that two distant rock- 

 formations containing similar fossils could not be scientifically 

 termed " contemporaneous." There was no proof of their having 

 been formed at the same time ; indeed, the facts of " provinces " and 

 migration were rather antagonistic to the idea of contemporaneity. 

 He therefore proposed that they be termed "homotaxial," in reference 

 to their occupying one and the same position in the geological 

 sequence of strata. The second feature of interest in the 1862 Address 

 is a series of remarks, chiefly based on negative and insufficient 

 evidence, on the persistence of certain types of living things through- 

 out long geological periods; and these "old judgments," as he termed 

 them, needed a good deal of revision in his Presidential Address of 

 1869. This and his famous plea on behalf of the geologists for more 

 time since the cooling of the globe than physicists then allowed, do 

 not admit of being abstracted. They are examples of Huxley's 

 best style, and must be read to be appreciated. They are among the 

 classics of geological literature. , 



A. Smith Woodward. 



