St. George Mivart. 95 



ST. GEORGE MIVART. 1827-1900. 



ST. GEORGE JACKSON MIVART, of Welsh descent, was born at 

 Brook Street, Grosvenor Square, on November 30, 1827, and educated 

 at Clapham, at the school of the late Rev. Dr. C. Pritchard, and at 

 Chiswick, afterwards at Harrow and King's College, London. It was 

 intended that he should go to Oxford, but as he had meanwhile (1844) 

 become a Catholic, his education was completed at St. Mary's College, 

 Oscott. He was, in 1851, called to the Bar at Lincoln's Inn ; but, drift- 

 ing instinctively into Natural History pursuits, he, eleven years later, 

 obtained the appointment of Lecturer on Zoology at St. Mary's Hospital 

 Medical School, which he held until 1884. While there, he published 

 his first paper and his first book the former (1864) entitled "Notes on 

 the Crania of the Lemuroidea, " the latter (1871) on ' The Genesis of 

 Species ' ; while, immediately following this, he produced a manual 

 for students, which is still in circulation, under the title of ' Lessons 

 in Elementary Anatomy ' (1873). The publication, thus rapidly, of a 

 paper involving a considerable amount of detailed observation and 

 description, of one volume aimed at nothing short of a bold attack on 

 the Darwinian doctrines, then slowly gaining ground, and of another 

 of the nature of a compilation from a voluminous literature, showed 

 Mivart to be an investigator and writer of no mean order, provided 

 his works were sound. It is now a matter of history that his 

 ' Genesis of Species ' brought him into conflict with Huxley in 1872, 

 in the pages of the ' Contemporary Review,' with the result that while 

 his book passed rapidly through a second edition, he and Huxley 

 became estranged. Mivart's zoological work, as far as it has advanced 

 knowledge, lay wholly with the Vertebrates, but he nevertheless 

 essayed in the later 'seventies a series of articles in the ' Popular Science 

 Review ' on certain Invertebrates. Each of these bears as its title the 

 name of a typical representative of a class ("Lobster," "Cuttle,'"' 

 " Echinus "), but is in reality an attempt at a very elementary 

 survey of this, based on the fuller study of its most easily accessible 

 genus. During the period of the production of these articles and 

 again in later years, Mivart attended Huxley's lectures at the Royal 

 School of Mines. In his article "Lobster" he admitted his indebted- 

 ness to Huxley's teaching, and in conversation with the writer he 

 admitted it for his ' Lessons ' wherefore it would appear that these, 

 his early works for the student, rank among the first products of the 

 Huxleyean influence, at the time at which Huxley was arriving at the 



