1894 RECEIVES THE DARWIN MEDAL 339 



Huxley's own -view of such scientific honours as 

 medals and diplomas was that they should be em- 

 ployed to stimulate for the future rather than to 

 reward for the past ; and delighted as he was at the 

 poetic justice of these two awards, this justice once 

 satisfied, he let his opinion be known that thence- 

 forward the Darwin Medal ought to be given only to 

 younger men. But when this year he found the 

 Darwin Medal awarded to himself " for his researches 

 in biology and his long association with Charles 

 Darwin," he could not but be touched and gratified 

 by this mark of appreciation from his fellow-workers 

 in science, this association in one more scientific 

 record with old allies and true friends — to " have his 

 niche in the Pantheon " next to Hooker and near to 

 Darwin. 



It was a rare instance of the fitness of things that 

 the three men who had done most to develop and to 

 defend Darwin's ideas should live to stand first in the 

 list of the Darwin medalists ; and Huxley felt this to 

 be a natural closing of a chapter in his life, a fitting 

 occasion on which to bid farewell to public life in 

 the world of science. Almost at the same moment 

 another chapter in science reached its completion in 

 the "coming of age" of Nature, a journal which, 

 when scientific interests at large had grown stronger, 

 had succeeded in realising his own earlier efforts to 

 found a scientific organ, and with which he had 

 always been closely associated. 



As mentioned above, he wrote for the November 



