42 MY LIFE 



the cases in which I have so differed, the weight of scientific 

 opinion is gradually turning in my direction. In reasoning 

 power upon the general phenomena of nature or of society, 

 I feel ahle to hold my own with them ; my inferiority consists 

 in my limited knowledge, and perhaps also in my smaller 

 power of concentration for long periods of time. 



With Huxley also I felt quite on an equality when deal- 

 ing with problems arising out of facts equally well known to 

 both of us ; but wherever the structure or functions of animals 

 were concerned, he had the command of a body of facts so 

 extensive and so complex that no one who had not devoted 

 years to their practical study could safely attempt to make 

 use of them. I therefore never ventured to infringe in any 

 way on his special departments of study, though I occa- 

 sionally made use of some of the results which he so lucidly 

 explained. 



One of my near neighbours while I lived in London was 

 Dr. W. B. Carpenter, the well-known physiologist and micro- 

 scopist,and a voluminous writer on various branches of natural 

 science. I often called on him in the evening, when I usually 

 found him at work with his microscope, and he always took 

 pleasure in showing me some special structure or some 

 obscure organism, and explaining the nature of what I saw. 

 The great controversy was then at its height as to the alleged 

 animal nature of a substance found in the Laurentian forma- 

 tion of Canada, supposed to be the oldest of all the stratified 

 rocks. Dr. Carpenter maintained that it was a low form of 

 Foraminifera, a group of which he had made a special study. 

 This supposed organism had been named by Sir William 

 Dawson, the geologist, Eozoon Canadense, and he was sup- 

 ported in his view by Dr. Carpenter, to whom he sent the 

 finest procurable specimens. By making sections in various 

 directions, and by the knowledge he possessed of the minute 

 structure of living and fossil Foraminifers, he arrived at his 

 conclusions ; while other observers declared that this sup- 

 posed primitive organism was entirely of mineral origin, 

 and that all the apparent details of organic structure were 



