OA Notes and Nexvs. \\xa 



Society in 1883. Between 1870 and 1SS5, when impaired health compelled 

 his retirement, he filled numerous government positions, including, from 

 1881 to 1885, that of Inspector of Salmon Fisheries. 



To quote from Professor Haeckel's memorable notice of Professor 

 Huxley's work, published in 1S74 (Nature, IX, Feb. 5, 1874, pp. 257, 258) : 

 " Indeed if at the present we run over the names distinguished in the 

 several sciences into which Natural Knowledge may be divided — in 

 Physics, in Chemistry, in Botany, in Zoology — we find but few investi- 

 gators who can be said to have mastered the whole range of any one of 

 them. Among the few we must place Thomas Henry Huxley, the dis- 

 tinguished British investigator, who at the present time justly ranks as 

 the first zoologist among his countrymen. When we say the first zoolo- 

 gist, we give the widest and fullest signification to the word 'zoology' 

 which the latest developments of this science demand. Zoology is, in 

 this sense, the entire biology of animals ; and w*e accordingly consider 

 as essential parts of it the whole field of Animal Morphology and Physi- 

 ology, including not only Comparative Anatomy and Embryology, but 

 also Systematic Zoology, Paheontology and Zoological Philosophy. We 

 look upon it as a special merit in Prof. Huxley that he has a thoroughly 

 broad conception of the science in which he labors, and that, with a most 

 careful and empirical acquaintance with individual phenomena, he com- 

 bines a clear philosophical appreciation of general relations. 



" When we consider the long series of distinguished memoirs with 

 which, during the last quarter of a century, Prof. Huxley has enriched 

 zoological literature, we find that in each of the larger divisions of the 

 animal kingdom we are indebted to him for important discoveries. From 

 the lowest animals, he has gradually extended his investigations up to 

 the highest, and even to man. His earlier labors were, for the most part, 

 occupied with the lower marine animals, especially with the pelagic organ- 

 isms swimming at the surface of the open sea. . . . But it is the com- 

 parative anatomy and classification of the Vertebrata which, during the 

 last ten years, he has especially studied and advanced. . . . After Charles 

 Darwin had, in 1859, reconstructed this most important biological theory, 

 and bv his epoch-making theory of Natural Selection placed it on an 

 entirelv new foundation, Huxley was the first who extended it to man, 

 and in 1S63, in his celebrated three Lectures on ' Man's Place in Nature,' 

 admirably worked out its most important developments. With luminous 

 clearness, and convincing certainty, he has here established the funda- 

 mental law, that, in everv respect, the anatomical differences between man 

 and the highest apes are of less value than those between the highest and 

 the lowest apes.*' 



Huxley's work on birds may be regarded as an incident in his general 

 work on the morphology and classification of Vertebrates, although 

 his contributions to ornithological literature place him in the front 

 rank among investigators of the affinities and relationships of the various 

 groups of birds to each other, and of birds as a class to other Vertebrates ; 



