ROYAL INSTITUTION LECTURE 21 



which he afterwards attained in this particular direction, 

 it is interesting, though scarcely surprising to learn that 

 his earlier efforts were not an unqualified success, owing 

 to undue speed and the assumption of a conversational 

 style. On this subject he remarks as follows in his 

 Autobiography (Coll. Essays, i, p. 15) : — 



" At that time I disliked public speaking, and had a firm 

 conviction that I should break down every time I opened my 

 mouth. I believe I had every fault a speaker could have (except 

 talking at random or indulging in rhetoric), when I spoke to the 

 first important audience I ever addressed, on a Friday evening at 

 the Royal Institution, in 1852. Yet, I must confess to having 

 been guilty, malgre moi, of as much public speaking as most of 

 my contemporaries, and for the last ten years it ceased to be so 

 much of a bugbear to me. I used to pity myself for having to 

 go through this training, but I am now more disposed to com- 

 passionate the unfortunate audiences, especially my ever-friendly 

 hearers at the Royal Institution, who were the subjects of my 

 oratorical experiments." 



The following two papers were ptiblished in 

 1853:- 



1. " Observations on the Existence of Cellulose in the 

 Tunic of Ascidians " (Q. J. Micros. Sci., i, 1 853. Sci. 

 Mem., i, xxi, p. 221.) — This is an extension of his 

 previous work on the subject. 



2. " On the Development of the Teeth, and on the 

 Nature and Import of Nasmyth's 'Persistent Capsule'" 

 (op. cit., i, 1853. ^^^- Mem., i, xxii, p. 224). — In this 

 paper Huxley, after describing the development of teeth, 

 homologizes them with hairs, a view which is not now 

 accepted. 



To these memoirs must be added a luminous exposi- 

 tion of "The Cell Theory" (Brit, and For. Medico- 

 Chir. Review, xii, 1 853, pp. 285-314. Sci. Mem., i, 

 xxiii, p. 242), which expounds the minute structure of 



