EDITOR'S NOTE 



Of the great thinkers of the nineteenth 

 century, Thomas Henry Huxley, son of an 

 i Ealing schoolmaster, was undoubtedly the 

 P most noteworthy. His researches in biology, 

 " his contributions to scientific controversy, his 

 pungent criticisms of conventional beliefs and 

 thoughts have probably had greater influence 

 than the work of any other English scientist. 

 And vet he was a " self-made " intellectual- 

 ist. In spite of the fact that his father was 

 a schoolmaster he passed through no regular 

 course of education. " I had," he said, 

 " two years of a pandemonium of a school 

 (between eight and ten) and after that 

 neither help nor sympathy in any intellectual 

 direction till I reached manhood." When 

 he was twelve a craving for reading found 

 satisfaction in Hutton's " Geology," and when 

 fifteen in Hamilton's " Logic." 



At seventeen Huxley entered as a student 

 at Charing Cross Hospital, and three years 

 later he was M.B. and the possessor of the 

 gold medal for anatomy and physiology. An 

 appointment as surgeon in the navy proved 

 to be the entry to Huxley's great scientific 

 career, for he was gazetted to the Rattlesnake, 

 commissioned for surveying work in Torres 

 Straits. He was attracted by the teeming 

 surface life of tropical seas and his study of 

 it was the commencement of that revolution 

 in scientific knowledge ultimately brought 

 about by his researches. 



Thomas Henry Huxley was born at Ealing 

 on May 4, 1825, and died at Eastbourne 

 June 29. 1895. 



