8 Teachings of Thomas Huxley 



evolutionists had been quarreling al>ont with 

 more or less waste of words for -Mine Little time. 

 Buxley, with characteristic energy, wont to the 

 foundation of things and demonstrated from 

 the embryoloui< ;il resoarehes of Rathke and 

 others thai skull and spinal column are inde- 

 pendent of each other bo far as development is 

 concerned, and that the former is not a varia- 

 tion and adaptation of the latter brought about 

 by the demands of the brain for a protective 

 covering. This was a direct challenge to the 

 teachings of Prof. Owen, the warmest supporter 

 of axial deviation, and from that time 011 the 

 good Superintendent of the British Museum 

 considered Huxley his natural enemy. 



Of this earlier work there is one character- 

 ise that has been already referred to in a 

 general way, and that is his capacity for find- 

 ing things out in books, or, as we eommonly 

 Bpeak of it, book "research" as distinguished 

 fr.>in that of laboratory. "Thoroughness in 

 this respect was rendered easier by the fact 

 that he read French as well as German with 

 almost as much facility as his mother tongue."* 



Buxley especially desired not to be made 

 conspicuous by his efforts to solve scientific 

 problems. When Prof. Tyndall wished to name 

 him joint, author in the theory of glacial forma- 

 tion upon which both had been working, Hux- 



*Life by his Son, Vol. I., p. 1G0. 



