PEOCEEDINGS OF THE MALACOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 289 



ORDINARY MEETING. 



Feiday, July 12th, 1895. 



Prof. G. B. Howes, Sec. L.S., President, in the Chair. 



By the kind invitation of Dr. and Mrs. Woodward, this meeting was 

 held at their private residence, 129, Beaufort Street, Chelsea, S.W. 



The minutes of the preceding meeting having been duly read and 

 confirmed, the President addressed the meeting as follows : — 



" Before we enter upon the business of this evening, I would remind 

 you that since our last meeting the World has lost one of its greatest men, 



The Right Hon. Thomas Henry Huxley. 

 To some of us liere assembled the loss is that of a best friend ; to the World 

 at large it is that of the clearest-headed man of his generation. The more 

 popular aspects of his life have been within the last few days recounted 

 through the Press, and it is rather to the memory of Huxley as a 

 Malacologist that I would offer a tribute in your presence. The first 

 paper from his pen following that ' On the Anatomy and Affinities of the 

 Medusae,' which made his name, was upon ' The Animal of Trigonia,' and 

 the last work published during his lifetime was that in conjunction with 

 our Continental contemporary Professor Paul Pelseneei', entitled ' Report 

 on the specimen of the genus Spirula collected by H.M.S. Challenger.' 

 During the 45 years which intervened between the publication of these 

 treatises there appeared from his hands eight others devoted to the 

 MoUusca. His epoch-marking monograph ' On the Morphology of the 

 Cephalous Mollusca ' is said by one who heard it read to have been a 

 revelation. His work upon the structure of the Belemnitidae has become 

 classical, and his Rede lecture ' On the Origin of Animal Forms ' ranks 

 among the most remarkable of his public addresses. He wrote papers of 

 peculiar interest upon the Brachiopoda and Bryozoa ; and in discussing the 

 resemblances between the Rotifera and the Annelidan, MoUuscan, and 

 Echinoderm larvae, he did much towards establishing the morphological 

 value of tlie Trochophore. 



" It is my good fortune, as you know, to have been associated in a 

 subordinate capacity with his pioneer's work as a scientific educationalist. 

 In the year 1885, on receiving promotion at his hands, I expressed to him 

 my appreciation of the honour of being allowed to co-operate in the 

 development of his system of scientific education, and in the dissemination 

 of the truths of biology by the methods which he had devised. He 

 rejilied, simply and characteristically, ' Howes, pass it on.' To read any 

 one of his monographs to which I have referred, or even those wonderful 

 chapters in his ' Manual of Invertebrated Animals,' in which ideas and 

 generalities first put forward in the aforesaid monographs are developed, 

 is to appreciate the power of the man ; for all that he did, he did 

 thoroughly. I question, however, whether Huxley's decision of character 

 is not even more remarkable than his mental gifts. In his singleness of 

 purpose and the eager pursuit after truth — truth at all costs and for its 

 own sake — he has set us a noble and undying example. Echoing his words, 

 let us endeavour to ' pass it on.' " 



The following is a list of Huxley's writings on the Mollusca, 



Brachiostoma, and the Trochophore, in their order of publication : — 



1850. " Description of the Animal of Trigonia, " — Proc. Zool. Soc, xvii, p. 30. 



1850. " Observations sur la circulation du sang chez les MoUusques des 



genres Firole et Atlante." — Ann. Sci. Nat. (Zool.), xiv, p. 193. 



