REMINISCENCES OF HUXLEY 221 
medal, a supreme distinction which he shared with 
Joule, Stokes, and Humboldt. In the address upon the 
presentation of the medal, the president, Lord Rosse, 
declared that Huxley had not only for the first time 
adequately described the Medusz and laid down 
rational principles for classifying them, but had inaugu- 
rated “a process of reasoning, the results of which can 
scarcely yet be anticipated, but must bear in a very 
important degree upon some of the most abstruse 
points of what may be called transcendental physi- 
ology.” 
In other words, the youthful Huxley had made a dis- 
covery that went to the bottom of things; and as in 
most if not all such cases, he had enlarged our know- 
ledge, not only of facts, but of methods. It was the 
beginning of a profound reconstruction of the classifi- 
cation of animals, extinct and living. In the earlier 
half of the century the truest classification was Cu- 
vier’s. That great genius emancipated himself from 
the notion that groups of animals should be arranged 
in an ascending or descending series, and he fully proved 
the existence of three divergent types, — Vertebrata, 
Mollusca, and Articulata. Some of the multitude of 
animals lower or less specialized than these he grouped 
by mistake along with Mollusca or Articulata, while 
all the rest he threw into a fourth class, which he called 
Radiata. It was evident that this type was far less 
clearly defined than the three higher types. In fact, it 
was open to the same kind of objection that used to be 
effectively urged against Max Miiller’s so-called Tura- 
nian group of languages: it was merely a negation. 
Radiata were simply animals that were neither Articu- 
lata nor Mollusca nor Vertebrata; in short, they were 
