iv MODERN EVOLUTION 189 



faculties, in a great number of cases, renders real 

 answers to such questions, not merely actually im- 

 possible, but theoretically inconceivable.' Thus, 

 before he was out of his teens, the philosophy that 

 ruled his life-teaching was taking definite shape. 



In 1845 he won his M.B. London with honours 

 in anatomy and physiology, and after a few months' 

 practice at the East End, applied, at the instance of 

 his senior fellow-student, Mr. (afterwards Sir) Joseph 

 Fayrer, for an appointment in the medical service of 

 the Navy. 



At the end of two months he was fortunate 

 enough to be entered on the books of Nelson's 

 old ship, the Victory, for duty at Haslar Hospital. 

 His official chief was the famous Arctic explorer, Sir 

 John Richardson, through whose recommendation he 

 was appointed, seven months later, assistant surgeon 

 of the Rattlesnake. That ship, commanded by Cap- 

 tain Owen Stanley, was commissioned to survey the 

 intricate passage within the Barrier Reef skirting the 

 eastern shores of Australia, and to explore the sea 

 lying between the northern end of that reef and New 

 Guinea. It was the best apprenticeship to what was 

 eventually the work of Huxley's life the solution 

 of biological problems and the indication of their far- 

 reaching significance. Darwin and Hooker had passed 

 through a like marine curriculum. The former served 

 as naturalist on board the Beagle when she sailed 

 on her voyage round the world in 1831 ; the latter as 

 assistant-surgeon on board the Erebus on her Ant- 

 arctic expedition in 1839. Fortune was to bring 

 the three shoulder to shoulder when the battle against 

 the theory of the immutability of species was fought. 



