34 Thomas Henry Huxley 



accurate, important, and in most cases novel, observations, and 

 illustrated them with skilful, pertinent drawini>;s. Even his in- 

 tellectual solitude had its good effects : it drove him to ponder 

 over the new facts which came before hiui, and all his observa- 

 tions were made alive with scientific thought." 



Afterwards, in England, he received the Royal Medal 

 of the Royal Society for this memoir on Medusae, shar- 

 ing this supreme distinction of scientific England with 

 men so illustrious as Jotile, the discoverer of the relation 

 between force and heat, Stokes, the great investigator 

 of optical physics, and Humboldt, the traveller, all of 

 w^ioni received medals in the same year. In making 

 the presentation to Huxley, the Earl of Rosse, then 

 President of the Royal Society, declared : 



" In those papers you have for the first time fully developed 

 their structure (that of the Medusae), and laid the foundation of 

 a rational theory for their classification. In your second 

 paper, on the anatomy of Salpa and Pyrosoma, the phenomena 

 have received the most ingenious and elaborate elucidations, 

 and have given rise to a process of reasoning, the results of 

 which can scarcely yet be anticipated, but must bear in a very 

 important degree upon some of the most abstruse points of 

 what may be called transcendental physiology." 



Many reasons make it difficult for us to realise, now, 

 the singular novelty and importance of Huxley's 

 memoir on the Medusae. The first is a reason which 

 often prevents great discoveries in almost every stibject 

 from receiving in after years their due respect. The 

 years that have passed since 1850 have seen not only 

 the most amazing progress in our knowledge of com- 

 parative anatomy, but almost a revoUition in the 

 methods of studying it. Huxley's work has been in- 

 corporated in the very body of science. A large num- 

 ber of later investigators have advanced upon the lines 

 he laid down ; and just as the superstructures of a great 



