HUXLEY 



CHAPTER I 



BIOGRAPHICAL (1825-1854) 



Thomas Henry Huxley — the seventh son of a 

 seventh son — was born at Eahng on May the 4th 

 1825. His father, George Huxley, was the senior 

 assistant master in a large semi-pubhc school. At the 

 critical moment of his birth a beehive close at hand 

 had just swarmed, and was about to make its way 

 into the room in which Huxley was to make his 

 first appearance in this world, when the nurse in 

 charge promptly shut the window. Had it not been 

 for this, he says, the swarm " might have settled on 

 my lips, and I should have been endowed with melli- 

 fluous eloquence. . . . But the opportunity was 

 lost, and I have been obliged to content myself 

 through life with saying what I mean in the plainest 

 of plain language, than which, I suppose, there is 

 no habit more ruinous to a man's prospects of 

 advancement." 



In most of his physical characteristics Huxley 

 resembled his mother — a brunette of emotional and 

 energetic temperament, to whom Huxley in his early 

 life was passionately devoted. His childhood does 



not seem to have given any giaat evidence of midue 



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