206 REMINISCENCES OF HUXLEY 
had a great deal, and of an accurate and well-digested 
sort; he had some incomprehensible way of absorbing 
it through the pores of the skin, —at least, he never 
seemed to read books. Huxley, on the other hand, 
seemed to read everything worth reading, — history, 
politics, metaphysics, poetry, novels, even books of 
science; for perhaps it may not be superfluous to 
point out to the general world of readers that no great 
man of science owes his scientific knowledge to books, 
Huxley’s colossal knowledge of the animal kingdom 
was not based upon the study of Cuvier, Baer, and 
other predecessors, but upon direct personal examina- 
tion of thousands of organisms, living and extinct. 
He cherished a wholesome contempt for mere book- 
ishness in matters of. science, and carried on war to 
the knife against the stupid methods of education in 
vogue forty years ago, when students were expected 
to learn something of chemistry or palzeontology by 
reading about black oxide of manganese or the denti- 
tion of anoplotherium. A rash clergyman once, with- 
out further equipment in natural history than some 
desultory reading, attacked the Darwinian theory in 
some sundry magazine articles, in which he made him- 
self uncommonly merry at Huxley’s expense. This 
was intended to draw the great man’s fire; and as 
the batteries remained silent the author proceeded to 
write to Huxley, calling his attention to the articles, 
and at the same time, with mock modesty, asking ad- 
vice as to the further study of these deep questions. 
Huxley’s answer was brief and to the point, “ Take a 
cockroach and dissect it!” 
Too exclusive devotion, however, to scalpel and 
microscope may leave a man of science narrow and 
