Parentage 3 



"A slender brunette of an emotional and energetic tempera- 

 ment, and possessed of the most piercing black eyes I ever saw 

 in a woman's head. With no more education than other women 

 of the middle classes in her day, she had an excellent mental 

 capacity. Her most distinguishing characteristic, however, was 

 rapidity of thought. If one ventured to suggest she had not 

 taken much time to arrive at any conclusion, she would say, 'I 

 cannot help it. Things flash across me.' That peculiarity has 

 been passed on to me in full strength : it has often stood me in 

 good stead : it has sometimes played me sad tricks, and it has 

 always been a danger. But, after all, if my time were to come 

 over again there is nothing I would less willingly part with than 

 my inheritance of ' mother wit.' " 



From his father he thinks that he inherited little 

 except an inborn capacity for drawing, "a hot tem- 

 per, and that amount of tenacity of purpose which 

 unfriendly observers sometimes call obstinacy." As it 

 happened, this natural gift for drawing proved of the 

 greatest service to him throughout his career. It is 

 imperative that every investigator of the anatomy of 

 plants and animals should be able to sketch his observ- 

 ations, and there is no greater aid to seeing things as 

 they are than the continuous attempt to reproduce 

 them by pencil or brush. 



Huxley was christened Thomas Henry, and he was 

 unaware why these names were chosen, but he humor- 

 ously records the curious chance that his parents should 

 hav'e chosen for him the " name of that particular 

 apostle with whom he had always felt most sympathy." 



Of his childhood little is recorded. He remembers 

 being vain of his curls, and his mother's expressed 

 regret that he soon lost the beauty of early childhood. 

 He attended for some time the school at Ealing with 

 which his father was associated, but he has little to say 

 for the training he received there. He writes : 



