XX] LONDON : VOYAGE TO SINGAPORE 323 



represent living men and women, being so utterly unlike the 

 clear, glossy, living skins of all savage peoples. To be 

 successful and life-like, such groups should be each com- 

 pletely isolated in a deep recess, with three sides representing 

 houses or huts, or the forest, or river-bank, while the open 

 front should be enclosed by a single sheet of plate-glass, 

 and the group should be seen at a distance of at least ten or 

 fifteen feet. In this way, with a carefully arranged illumina- 

 tion from above and an artistic colouring of the figures and 

 accessories, each group might be made to appear as life-like 

 as some of the best figures at Madame Tussaud's, or as the 

 grand interiors of cathedrals, which were then exhibited at 

 the Diorama. In the museum of the future, such groups 

 will find their place in due succession to the groups illus- 

 trating the life histories of the other mammalia ; but ample 

 space and a very careful attention to details must be given 

 in order to ensure a successful and attractive representation. 



It was at this time that I first saw Huxley. At one of 

 the evening meetings of the Zoological Society (in December, 

 1852) he gave an account of some Echinococci found in the 

 liver of a zebra which died in the gardens. He did not read 

 the paper, but, with the help of diagrams and sketches on the 

 blackboard, showed us clearly its main points of structure, its 

 mode of development, and the strange transformations it 

 underwent when the parent worm migrated from the intes- 

 tine to other parts of the body of the animal. I was particu- 

 larly struck with his wonderful power of making a difficult 

 and rather complex subject perfectly intelligible and extremely 

 interesting to persons who, like myself, were absolutely 

 ignorant of the whole group. Although he was two years 

 younger than myself, Huxley had already made a consider- 

 able reputation as a comparative anatomist, was a Fellow of 

 the Royal Society, and a few months later was appointed 

 Professor of Natural History and Palaeontology at the Royal 

 School of Mines. I was amazed, too, at his complete mastery 

 of the subject, and his great amount of technical knowledge 

 of a kind to which I have never given any attention, the 



