298 NATURAL SCIENCE. Nov., 



always with him. He was never too busy to give them the recognition 

 they sought, and their friendship was one of the things he valued." 



It is plain enough, from the work that he accomplished, that 

 Huxley was untiring in his industry. Mr. Smalley testifies : — " He 

 never spared himself. Often and often have I known him leave the 

 circle of family and friends, of which he was the life, very early in 

 the evening and betake himself to his library ; a room of which 

 the only luxury was books. If remonstrated with, or appealed to for 

 another half-hour, he would only shake his head. There was some- 

 thing to be done. And it would be midnight or one or two o'clock 

 before it was done, and then he was up at seven in the morning. I 

 sometimes thought he had no higher happiness than work ; perhaps 

 nobody has. He would dine on a little soup and a bit of fish ; more 

 than that was a clog on his mind. ' The great secret,' he said, ' is 

 to preserve the power of working continuously sixteen hours a day if 

 need be. If you cannot do that you may be caught out any time '." 



Sir William Flower upon Huxley. 

 The Director of the Natural History Museum contributes to the 

 September number of the North American Review an interesting series 

 of personal reminiscences of Huxley. He reminds his readers that 

 Huxley was not in early life " what is commonly called a naturalist." 

 " His early tastes were for literature and engineering," and he dis- 

 played no boyish love for the formation of collections. Sir W. Flower 

 thinks that most men who have distinguished themselves in zoology 

 or palaeontology were specimen-hunters in their boyhood. Darwin, 

 of course, is the first instance that rises in the mind ; but every 

 biologist knows personally many others. We are disposed to think, 

 however, that a considerable and increasing number of biologists do 

 not begin as school-boy naturalists. The inquiry would be so interest- 

 ing that we wish some person of leisure would send a circular to every 

 biologist in Europe and tabulate the answers to the questions : 



1. Have you ever made collections ? 



2. If so, of what ? 



3. If not, how came you to devote yourself to biological work ? 

 We think that there can be no doubt that every zoologist (and we 

 include palaeontologists in the term) ought to have studied species at 

 some period of his career. 



Another interesting point referred to by Sir William Flower is 

 Huxley's treatment of "specimens." In this matter there are two 

 kinds of consciences, and it is a grim struggle when it comes to a 

 battle between them. There is the museum conscience, to which the 

 violation of a rare or perfect specimen by scalpel and scissors is the 

 sin not to be forgiven. There is the anatomical conscience, to which 

 shutting up in a glass bottle a rare specimen, instead of dissecting it, 

 seems a miserly stupidity. Of course, the easy solution is when there 

 are more specimens than one. But when there is only one, is it to be 



