Huxley's Life and Work ix 



After serving as assistant under one or two physicians 

 he received an appointment in 1842 to one of the free 

 scholarships at the Charing Cross Hospital in London. He 

 was now seventeen years old and his application for ad- 

 mission to Charing Cross certified that " He has a fair 

 knowledge of Latin, reads French with facility, and knows 

 something of German. He has also made consider- 

 able progress in mathematics, having, as far as he has ad- 

 vanced, a thorough not a superficial knowledge of the 

 subject." In 1845 he won his M.B. (Bachelor of Medi- 

 cine) at the University of London and also a gold medal 

 for proficiency in anatomy and physiology. He tells us 

 also that in this year he published his first scientific paper, 

 "a very little one," in the Medical Gazette', but he does 

 not tell us that this paper announced a permanent contribu- 

 tion to anatomy. The youthful investigator had found a 

 hitherto undiscovered membrane in the root of the human 

 hair and this membrane is now known as " Huxley's layer." 



In December of 1846 Huxley left England as assistant 

 surgeon on board her Majesty's ship, the Rattlesnake. 

 The cruise lasted four years, three being spent in Aus- 

 tralian waters. It was on a voyage of this sort that 

 Charles Darwin and Joseph Dalton Hooker had laid the 

 foundations of their scientific careers. Indeed we can 

 hardly imagine a better scientific training than such a 

 voyage afforded. The young scientist had to depend 

 largely on his own resources. He had to collect and dis- 

 sect without the aid of many books. He was confronted 

 daily by forms of marine life either unknown or at least 

 unclassified. But it was just the discipline that Huxley 

 needed and wanted. When he returned in 1850, Edward 

 Forbes, the best English authority on star-fishes, examined 

 his collection and wrote to him, saying: "I can say with- 

 out exaggeration that more important or more complete 



