SCIENTIFIC WORK 245 



if a little emphatically, at the International Congress 

 on Zoology in 1895 : — 



" In the person of Huxley, science has sustained a great loss. 

 We do not know any other investigators of our century who had 

 the talent of foresight to such an extent as Huxley. It was he 

 who, properly speaking, founded modern embryology by demon- 

 strating the homology of the germinal layers of Vertebrates with 

 the ectoderm and endoderm of Ccelenterates. It was he who 

 supported Darwin in the publication of the fundamental work on 

 the origin of species, and it was he who was the fervent pro- 

 pagator of the views therein contained. The two names of 

 Darwin and Huxley have built up the story of the scientific 

 world" (Nature, liii, 1895, p. 651). 



Huxley described Sir Richard Owen as one upon 

 whom the mantle of Cuvier had fallen. He himself may 

 be considered as the inheritor of the tradition created by 

 Johannes Muller and Von Baer, the respective founders 

 of comparative morphology and embryology. And it 

 may be added that his work assimilates to that of the 

 former in the keen appreciation of physiology which 

 gives a living interest to the arid facts of anatomy. His 

 standpoint in morphology was not merely static but 

 dynamic. To him an organism was not merely an ex- 

 quisite piece of machinery, but a machine in motion, an 

 adaptation to a complicated and changing environment, a 

 solution to a series of vital problems. 



Unfortunately biological experts alone can assess the 

 value of Huxley's original work, and in a biography in- 

 tended for the general public it can only be treated in a 

 very generalized way. On the other hand, his con- 

 troversial writings, lucid to a degree and full of the 

 liveliest interest to all, are eminently suitable for quotation. 

 Hence the danger of a one-sided view as to the place he 

 occupied, a danger which would be non-existent in the 

 case of a less versatile man. 



