A40 



NA TURE 



[xMarcii 8, 1900 



their careful documentation cannot fail to convince the 

 reader that, in following the authors through the mazes 

 of Egyptian and Babylonian belief and ceremonial ob- 

 servance, he has no uncertain guides. There will be few 

 who will not learn from these volumes much detail of 

 which they were previously ignorant, and many will 

 derive from them their first clear conception of what was 

 really believed in ancient Babylonia and of the sublime 

 grandeur of that faith which during so many centuries 

 was the spiritual stay and solace of the Egyptians. 



Frank Rede Fowke. 



HUXLEY'S SCIENTIFIC MEMOIRS. 

 The Scientific Memoirs of Thomas Henry Huxley. 

 Edited by Prof. Sir Michael Foster, K.C.B., M.A., 

 LL.D., F.R.S., and by Prof. E. Ray Lankester, M.A., 

 LL.D., F.R.S. In Four Volumes. Vol. II. With 

 Portrait. Pp. xi + 612. (London : Macmillan and 

 Co., Ltd.) 



THE second volume of this valuable series will be 

 welcomed by a large class of readers, and not 

 alone by those who are professed biologists. The thirty- 

 seven memoirs here collected together for the first time 

 in one volume were published at dates ranging from 

 1857 to 1864, and, therefore, cover a period of strife and 

 ferment which originated within the scientific world, but 

 soon spread beyond it, that, namely, caused by the pub- 

 lication of Darwin's " Origin of Species " in 1859. 



Naturally, we find amongst the writings, at this period 

 of one of the foremost champions of Darwinism, many 

 memoirs devoted either to discussion of the problem of 

 evolution as a whole, or to threshing out some special 

 point in the evidence for or against the theory and its 

 applications. Such papers will always possess an in- 

 terest, even if only a historical one. Here we have, for 

 instance, Huxley's famous controversy with Owen as to 

 the alleged constancy of the " posterior horn of the 

 lateral ventricle" and the "hippocampus minor" as 

 characters distinguishing absolutely the brain of man 

 from that of the ape, and of sufficient importance to rank 

 man as a distinct sub class of the mammalia. It is diffi 

 cult to imagine any naturalist of eminence at the present 

 day advancing such conclusions, even granting the cor- 

 rectness of the premises, which, as a matter of fact, Huxley 

 was able to impugn without difficulty. Here, again, we 

 find the well-known controversy as to whether the human 

 remains from the Neanderthal were those of an ape-like 

 man or of a " rickety Mongolian Cossack." And before 

 leaving the subject of Darwinism, we may draw attention 

 to Huxley's eloquent and impassioned appeal, in a lecture, 

 " On Species, Races and their Origin," delivered before the 

 Royal Institution, for consideration of the facts of the case 

 without prejudice. In his peroration the clerical and other 

 opponents of the progress of physical science are likened 

 to " little Canutes of the hour, enthroned in solemn state," 

 who bid the great wave to stay, but who, when forced to 

 fly, learn no lesson of humility, and pitching their tents at 

 what seems a safe distance, repeat their folly ; and, in 

 conclusion, he calls upon the people of England to cherish 

 and venerate science. " Listen to those who would 

 silence and crush her, and I fear our children will see the 

 glory of England vanishing like Arthur in the mist." At 

 NO. 15S4. VOL 61] 



a time when colleges could be named in our great Uni- 

 versities whose authorities would prefer a " football blue " 

 to a "research student," we may ask ourselves if we are 

 not beginning to realise this prophecy. 



It is not possible within the limits of a review to do 

 more than indicate the many papers of interest col- 

 lected in this volume, some of which laid the founda- 

 tions of our knowledge, or marked an epoch in its 

 advance, in not a few directions. Of great merit, but 

 of interest to a more limited circle, are the numerous 

 treatises upon fossil types, contributed to various geo- 

 logical periodicals ; or anatomical memoirs, of which 

 that upon the Nautilus may be taken as an example. 

 Of more general interest are the two classical memoirs, 

 "On the Agamic Reproduction and Morphology of 

 Aphis," and "On the Anatomy and Development of 

 Pyrosoma," in which Huxley made great additions to 

 our knowledge, both of the theory and of the facts, of 

 non-sexual processes of reproduction in both forms. 

 From Pyrosoma he was led on to a discussion of the 

 significance of the germinal vesicle of the ovum, which 

 also forms the subject of a Royal Institution lecture 

 deserving more than a passing notice. 



At the present day it may be safely asserted that 

 though much remains to be investigated and elucidated, 

 yet a number of fundamental facts have been generally 

 established with regard to the question of the nature 

 of the sexual elements, and the process of fertilisation, 

 in animals and plants. No instructed person now doubts 

 that the ovum, whatever its size or peculiarities in a given 

 species, represents a single cell set free from a many- 

 celled organism, and that the germinal vesicle is the 

 cell nucleus, which, after certain processes of maturation, 

 unites in the process of fertilisation with the nucleus of 

 the male cell or spermatozoon to form the so-called 

 segmentation nucleus, the ancestor by repeated divisions 

 of all the nuclei in the body of the future embryo. 

 These are facts which now are taught to every student 

 of biology in his first term, but in the early sixties it 

 was not so. The details of fertilisation were unknown, 

 except in so far that both ovum and spermatozoon were 

 concerned in it, and the true nature of these two ele- 

 ments, in the light of the cell theory, was not under- 

 stood. Many authorities believed that the germinal 

 vesicle of the ovum and its contents disappeared, and 

 had no direct connection with the cells of the blasto- 

 derm or future embryo. Huxley, on the contrary, was 

 on the side of those who held the more correct view, 

 that the cells and nuclei of the blastoderm stand in 

 genetic relation to the germinal vesicle. His observa- 

 tions were, however, in so far erroneous, in that he 

 believed he had seen in Pyrosoma the vitellus of the 

 ovum disappear, and the cells of the blastoderm arising 

 within the germinal vesicle. 



In judging a mistake of this kind, the modern biologist 

 will remember, in the first place, that the present state 

 of our knowledge with regard to these matters has been 

 attained by the gradual perfection of a technique more 

 complicated than French cookery, and that to investigate 

 or demonstrate these now well-known facts, a laboratory 

 stocked with reagents and aniline dyes, with compli- 

 cated machines for section cutting and other apparatus, 

 is required. In the second place he will note, perhaps 



