64 Thomas Henry Huxley 



and July of that year had given lectures at the school 

 in place of Forbes. Huxley says himself : 



"I refused the former poiut-blank, and accepted the latter 

 only provisionally, telling Sir Henry that I did not care for 

 fossils, and that I should give up natural history as soon as I 

 could get a physiological post. But I held the office for thirty- 

 one years, and a large part of my work has been palaeonto- 

 logical." 



The salary of the post of IvCCturer on Natural History 

 was scanty, but De La Beche, who evidently recognised 

 Huxley's genius, and was anxious to have him attached 

 even against his will to palaeontological work, created 

 a place for him as Naturalist to the Geological Survey', 

 by which a more suitable income was found for him. 

 His official duties were at first in the Geological Museum 

 of the Surv^ey, but were distinguished from those of the 

 special Palaeontologist, Mr^ Harvey. His income was 

 now assured, and for the rest of his life, until towards 

 its close, when he retired to Eastbourne, he lived the 

 ordinary life of a professional man of science in Lon- 

 don. He was now able to marry, and on July 21, 1855, 

 he was married to a lady whom he had met in Sydney 

 in 1847, and whom he had not seen since the Rattle- 

 snake left Sydney finally in the beginning of May, 1850. 

 During the years 1856, 1857, and 1858, he held the 

 post of Fullerian Professor of Physiology in the Royal 

 Institution, choosing as the title of his first two courses 

 of lectures Physiology and Comparative Anatomy, as 

 he still cherished the idea of being in the first place a 

 physiologist. 



" Moreover," writes Professor Michael Foster, "like most 

 other young professional men of science, he had to eke out his 

 not too ample iucome by labours undertaken chiefly for their 



