Huxley's Types i8i 



polyp. We dissect a starfish, an earthworm, a snail, a squid, 

 and a fresh-water mussel. We examine a lobster and a cra}-- 

 fish, and a black beetle. We go on to a common skate, a cod- 

 fish, a frog, a tortoise, a pigeon, and a rabbit, and that takes us 

 about all the time we have to give. The purpose of this course 

 is not to make skilled dissectors, but to give everj' student a 

 clear and definite conception, by means of sense images, of the 

 characteristic structure of each of the leading modifications of 

 the animal kingdom ; and that is perfectly possible by going 

 no further than the length of that list of forms which I have 

 enumerated. If a man knows the structure of the animals I 

 have mentioned, he has a clear and exact, however limited ap- 

 prehension of the essential features of the organization of all 

 those great divisions of the animal and vegetable kingdoms to 

 which the forms I have mentioned severally belong. And it 

 then becomes possible to him to read with profit ; because every 

 time he meets with the name of a structure, he has a definite 

 image in his mind of what the name means in the particular 

 creature he is reading about, and therefore the reading is not 

 mere reading. It is not mere repetition of words ; but every 

 term employed in the description, we will say of a horse, or of 

 an elephant, will call up the image of the things he had seen 

 in the rabbit, and he is able to form a distinct conception of 

 that which he has not seen, as a modification of that which he 

 has seen." 



Huxley himself was originalh- a medical man ; all 

 through his life he was chiefly interested in the biologi- 

 cal sciences which underlie a scientific practice of medi- 

 cine, and as teacher and examiner he had much to do 

 with the shaping of medical education in London. 

 Acting in various public capacities, as a member of 

 commissions dealing with medical education, or as a 

 witness before them, in magazine articles and in public 

 speeches he made many contributions to the problems 

 to be faced in medical education. Some of these re- 

 lated to the conditions peculiar to medical training in 

 lyondon. In the greatest cit}^ of the world there was 



