INTRODUCTION. 



A few years ago a Governor of the University 

 of Birmingham, admiring the genius of Huxley, 

 and wishing to do something to perpetuate the 

 memory of his association with Birmingham, gave 

 an endowment for the perpetual provision of a 

 Lecture to be given annually, to the assembled 

 University and its friends, under the title of " The 

 Huxley Lecture." No conditions were attached, 

 and no subject was prescribed, save that it should 

 be on some theme which might have interested 

 Huxley a scope sufficiently wide for anything. 



It seemed appropriate that the first one or two 

 lectures should deal with some aspect of Huxley 

 himself, and his friend Sir Michael Foster was 

 asked to give the first lecture on the more personal 

 side. No claim was made on the lecturers as 

 to publication, nor was the discourse even written 

 in every case. Those that were written often 

 appeared subsequently in some serial publication 

 and thus became more widely accessible. 



