i84 



NA TURE 



[December 26, 1895 



to science, either as an original investigator or as an exponent. 

 As, however, I presume that it is as the official head of the 

 Science and Art Department that I have been asked to accept 

 the chairmanship of this Committee, it may be proper that I 

 should open the proceedings by a very brief statement of the 

 official connection of Prof. Huxley with that Department, 

 although I am perfectly aware that the services which he rendered 

 to that Dep:irtnient, valued and valuable as they were, form but a 

 very small part of the work which Prof. Huxley did for science ; 

 which, both during his lifetime and since his death, has been so 

 fully recognised by every scientific man in the country. 



Prof. Huxley, immediately after leaving the Navy, in which 

 he commenced his career, succeeded in 1854 Prof. Forbes, as 

 Lecturer on Natural History in the Central School of Science 

 in Jermyn-street. This school subsequently became the Royal 

 School of Mines. It was transferred to South Kensington in 

 1 88 1, and there merged in the Royal College of Science. Prof. 

 Huxley was the first Dean of the College, and on his retirement 

 from the public service in 1885, he was requested by the 

 heads of the Department to retain the office in an honorary 

 capacity. This he did, to the day of his death ; attending 

 the meetings of the Council, and giving assistance in other 

 ways. He was also Honorary Professor of Biology in 

 the College, retaining a general charge of the biological 

 section. While Professor at the College he developed 

 his system of biological teaching — which has had so marked an 

 influence on biological teaching in all parts of the world. On 

 his retirement in 1885 he presented to the College the large and 

 valuable collection of books on natural history which he had 

 formed. The room which he occupied was, by the authority of 

 the Lords of the Committee of Council on Education, devoted 

 to a Huxley Biological Laboratory for research, and it is in con- 

 stant use by advanced students of biology. A scholarship has 

 been endowed in connection with the College, and the history 

 of that endowment may be of some interest. Prof. Huxley on 

 one occasion mat in society Miss Marshall, the daughter of Mr. 

 Matthew Marshall, for many years Chief Cashier of the Bank of 

 England, and in consequence of a conversation which she had 

 with Prof. Huxley on that occasion, she left to the Department 

 a large number of books and instruments and, in addition, a 

 bequest of ;^iooo, from the proceeds of which the scholarship 

 referred to has been endowed. 



Prof. Huxley was, for more than forty years, intimately con- 

 nected with the Science and Art Department. The Jermyn 

 Street Museum, in which we are met to-day, is a section of that 

 Department, and both in this lecture-theatre and in the class- 

 rooms upstairs. Prof. Huxley for many years delivered his 

 lectures. 



It was almost my first duty — and I need not say, my painful 

 duty — after I became President of the Council, to address (on 

 the part of the Committee of Council on Education) a letter of 

 condolence to Mrs. Huxley, in which the Committee placed on 

 record its high appreciation of the services to science and art 

 rendered by Prof. Huxley in the capacities to which I have 

 referred, and in addition, on many inquiries by Royal Commis- 

 sions, in which he had taken part. I am quite aware that the 

 time of those who are here is valuable, and I shall, therefore, 

 not detain you any longer, but must leave to others the duty of 

 expressing the recognition of the whole of the scientific world of 

 the brilliant life and labours of Prof. Huxley. I have thought, 

 however, that this brief reference to the official side of Prof. 

 Huxley's career might not form an inappropriate introduction to 

 the wider view of his work and of his character, which it will be 

 the duty of those who are to follow me to present to you. 



Prof. M. Foster (Joint Honorary' Secretary of the Provisional 

 Committee), after referring to a number of letters expressing 

 regret at being unable to be present at the meeting, gave a brief 

 history of the movement for establishing a memorial, as 

 follows : — 



Very shortly after the death of Prof. Huxley, a few of his per- 

 sonal friends met together in the rooms of the Royal Society ; 

 they thought they would be carrying out the wishes of all by 

 promoting such a memorial, and invited a number of repre- 

 sentative and influential persons to meet to consider the matter. 

 They met, and it was then thought desirable to take further 

 steps ; they therefore constituted themselves a Provisional Com- 

 mittee, and sent out invitations to a very much larger number of 

 persons to form a General Committee. These invitations were 

 very cordially received, and, among others, we had the pleasure 

 of hearing from H. R. H. the Prince of Wales that he would 



NO. 1365, VOL. 53] 



join the Committee, and would, further, accept the duty 

 of Honorary President. At that time the summer was too 

 far advanced to take any active steps, and the meeting of 

 the General Committee was postponed until the present date. In 

 the meantime we approached his Grace the Duke of Devonshire, 

 asking if it would be his wish to act as Chairman of the Com- 

 mittee, and his (Irace kindly accepted this duty. The Pro- 

 visional Committee have given much time to the consideration 

 of various suggestions made as to the form which the proposed 

 memorial should take ; and certain resolutions, embodying the 

 decisions arrived at, will he submitted to you ; and it is for you 

 to decide how far they shall be carried into effect. 



Lord Kelvin, P.R.S., then proposed the first resolution : — 

 ' ' That it is desirable to establish a memorial to the late 

 Right Hon. Thomas Henry Huxley." 



He said : — As an original investigator in biology, Huxley has, 

 by his life-long perseverance in working for the increase of 

 natural knowledge, left to the world a monument more enduring 

 than any bronze or marble in which his survivors may give 

 material expression to their gratitude. Of his originality 

 he gave early proof. Whilst still a student in Charing Cross 

 Hospital, he made an exceedingly skilful and acute micro- 

 scopic investigation of the structure of hair ; he discovered 

 a special structure, and described it in a communication to 

 the Medical Times and Gazette with so much effect that, 

 to this day, it is known as " Huxley's layer." That was 

 something for a young medical student to have done. His 

 indomitable resolution to go on with work ; his attraction to 

 original investigation — an irresistible passion of his through life 

 — was manifested from beginning to end. Soon after his 

 technical school education in medicine was completed, he 

 went away as medical officer to the Rattlesnake, on a four 

 years' cruise. Happily, his medical duties left him 

 some leisure ; that leisure he employed in a series of 

 most important investigations in natural history, which has made 

 the cruise of the Rattlesnake celebrated in the annals of science. 

 I cannot tell you how many memoirs he sent home from the 

 Rattlestiake ; some of them never came back ; one he found on 

 his return, in the shape of a memoir communicated to the Royal 

 Society and published in its Transactions ; it is known to all 

 naturalists, and is admitted to be a very valuable and important 

 paper. Several other papers were sent, including one very im- 

 portant paper — although it only occupies half a page of the 

 Report of the British Association — dealing with the blood 

 corpuscles of certain marine animals picked up in the surveying 

 work of the Rattlesnake. These first works done, not in a 

 scholastic manner as a thesis for a Degree of Philosophy, 

 but simply from the innate fire and determined purpose .of. 

 the worker, were but the beginning of a long series of 

 memoirs which soon made the name of Huxley famous through- 

 out the scientific world. He was very early recognised to be one 

 of the first biological investigators of the day, and the value of his 

 work will be declared to you by others who know thoroughly 

 the merits of the work and the wants which that work supplied 

 in natural science. They will tell you that his work in Com- 

 parative Anatomy was of very great value indeed ; that he almost 

 created a new era in biological science, by the great advances 

 that he gave to the new Morphology. He carried out and 

 extended, in the most admirable and valuable manner, the work 

 of Von Baer and Johannes Midler, tending in this direction, 

 and now we have — what medical students and students of natural 

 science in Huxley's student-days could learn nothing of in school 

 or university — we have Morphology and General Biology taught 

 regularly and systematically ; and, I believe, I may safely say, 

 not only to the great benefit of medical science, but to the great 

 benefit of science in general ; to the great benefit of those who 

 are studying science for the sake of knowledge and of opening 

 their minds, and of understanding the grandeur and beauty of 

 nature and what lay underneath it. 



Huxley's work was not confined to miscroscopic examination 

 and the dissection of plants and animals — comparative anatomy 

 generally, including the vegetable world — although it began 

 with that. He entered on the subject of geology and of 

 paleontology in a manner which has left fruit of a most 

 enduring character, especially in palaeontology : his tracing of 

 relationships, and his philosophical reasoning regarding these 

 relationships, which led him to find in the rocks the ancestors of 

 many creatures now living on this earth, and his contributions 

 to the great and newly-developed science of evolution, are so 

 well known that I need only name them to at once remind you 



