220 REMINISCENCES OF HUXLEY 
seem superfluous. A few words are all that can here 
be given; I cannot pretend even to make a well- 
rounded sketch. 
In one respect there was a curious similarity be- 
tween the beginnings of Huxley’s scientific career 
and of Darwin’s. Both went, as young men, on long 
voyages into the southern hemisphere, in ships of the 
royal navy, and from the study of organisms encoun- 
tered on these voyages both were led to theories of vast 
importance. Huxley studied with keen interest and 
infinite patience the jellyfish and polyps floating on 
the surface of the tropical seas through which his ship 
passed. Without books or advisers, and with scant 
aid of any sort except his microscope, which had to be 
tied to keep it steady, he scrutinized and dissected 
these lowly forms of life, and made drawings and dia- 
grams illustrating the intricacies of their structure, 
until he was able, by comparison, to attain some very 
interesting results. During four years, he says, “I 
sent home communication after communication to the 
Linnzan Society, with the same result as that obtained 
by Noah when he sent the raven out of his ark. Tired 
at last of hearing nothing about them, I determined 
to do or die, and in 1849 I drew up a more elaborate 
paper, and forwarded it to the Royal Society.” This 
was a memoir On the Anatomy and the Affinities of 
the Family of Medusz; and it proved to be his dove, 
though he did not know it until his return to England, 
a year later. Then he found that his paper had been 
published, and in 1851, at the age of twenty-six, he was 
made a Fellow of the Royal Society. He went on 
writing papers giving sundry results of his observations, 
and the very next year received the society’s Royal 
