REMINISCENCES OK HUXLEY 



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tug-itive work, not one of them so iniu-l, as allucl,.s to th. ,a.<lin-il 

 achievements m virtue of which his name marks an epoch' It is v,.rv 

 much 118 if the biographers of Newton were to enlarov upon hisoffici-il 

 labors at the mint and his theory of light, while preserving a dead 

 silence as to gravitation and fluxions. A few woids concerning Hux- 

 ley's work will therefore not seem superfluous. A few words'^are all 

 that can here be given; I can not pretend even to make a well-rounded 

 sketch. 



In one respect there was a curious similarity between the beginnings 

 of Huxley's scientific career and of Darwin's. Both went, ;w young 

 men, on long voyages into the southern hemisphere in ships of the 

 royal navy, and from the study of organisms encou?itei-cd on these 

 voyages both were led to theories of vast importance. Huxley studied 

 with keen interest and infinites patience the jellyfish and polyps floating 

 on the surface of the tropical seas through which his sjiip passcul. 

 Without books or advisers, and with scant aid of any soi-t except his 

 microscope, which had to be tied to keep it steady, he scrutinized and 

 dissected these lowly forms of life, and made drawings and diagrams 

 illustrating the intricacies of their structure, until he was able, by 

 comparison, to attain some very interesting results. I )uri ng four years, 

 he says, "I sent home communication after communication to the 

 Linnsean Society, with the same result as that obtained by Noah when 

 hesent the raven out of his ark. Tired at last of hearing nothing about 

 them, I determined to do or die, and in 1849 1 drew uj) a more elabo- 

 rate paper, and forwarded it to the Roval Society." This was a menu >i r 

 On the Anatomy and the Affinities of the Family of Medusa-; and it 

 proved to ])e his dove, though he did not know it until his retuiii to 

 England, a year later. Then he found that his paper had l»een i)ul.- 

 lished, and in 1851, at the age of 26, he was made a Fellow of the 

 Royal Society. He went on writing papers giving sundry ivsults of 

 his observations, and the very next year received the society's royal 

 medal, a supreme distinction which he shared with .loule. Stokes, and 

 Humboldt. In the address upon the presentation of the nu'dal. the 

 president, Lord Rosse, declared that Huxley had not only for th.' lirst 

 time adequately descri})ed the Medusji? and laid down rational prin.-iples 

 for classifving them, but had inaugurated ^' a process of reasoning, the 

 results of which can scarcely yet be anticipated. l)ut must hear m a very 

 important degree upon some of the most abstruse points of what may 

 be called transcendental physiology." 



In other words, the vouthful Huxley had made a discovery lh:jt went 

 to the bottom of things; and as in most if not all siM-h cas.-s. he had 

 enlarged our knowledge not only of facts, butof metho.l.. It was the 

 beginning of aprofound reconstruction of the (•lass.lieat.<...olamn.ai>, 



extinct and living. In the earlier half of the c-entury the truest class,- 

 fication was Cuvier's. That great genius emancipated himself from the 



