276 Thomas Henry Huxley 



societies, with the occasional obHgations of royal com- 

 missions, public boards, and lecturing engagements. 

 The quiet routine of his life was diversified by many 

 visits to provincial towns to deliver lectures or addresses, 

 by meetings of the British Association, by holidays in 

 vSwit/.crland, during which, with Tyndall, he made 

 special studies of the phenomena of glaciation, and in 

 the usual Continental resorts, and by several trips to 

 America. 



In a rough-and-ready fashion, Huxley's active life 

 may be broken into a set of decennial periods, each 

 with tolerably distinctive characters. The first period, 

 roughly from 1850 to i860, was almost purely scientific. 

 It was occupied by his voyage, by his transition to science 

 as a career, his researches into the invertebrate forms of 

 life, the beginning of his palaeontological investiga- 

 tions, and a comparatively small amount of lecturing 

 and literary work. The second decennium still found 

 him employed chiefly in research, vertebrate and ex- 

 tinct forms absorbing most of his attention. He was 

 occupied actively with teaching, but the dominant 

 feature of the decennium was his assumption of the 

 Darwinian doctrines. In connection with these latter, 

 his literar}^ and lecturing work increased greatly, and 

 the side issues of what was, in itself, purely a scientific 

 controversy began to lead him into metaphysical and 

 religious studies. The third period, from 1870 to 1880, 

 was considerabl}' different in character. He had become 

 the most prominent man in biological science in Eng- 

 land, at a time when biological science was attracting 

 a quite unusual amount of scientific and public atten- 

 tion. Public honours and public duties, some of them 

 scientific, others general, began to crowd upon him, 

 and the time at his disposal for the quiet labours of 



