THE MAN II 



one's life," and, " not without a good deal of damage 

 to spars and rigging," he rounded it. In July, 1854, 

 on the transfer of his friend Edward Forbes to Edin- 

 burgh, he was appointed Professor of Natural History 

 at the School of Mines with a salary of ^"200, which, 

 soon after, was doubled on his becoming naturalist to 

 the Geological Survey. The next year Miss Heath- 

 orn's parents brought her to England. Her health 

 was so bad that a famous doctor gave her only six 

 months to live. But the faculty differed; Huxley 

 took the brighter view, and wrote thus to Hooker on 

 the 1 ith July : — 



I terminate my Baccalaureate and take my degree 

 of M.A.trimony (isn't that atrocious ?) on Saturday, 

 July 21. 



When he was appointed to the School of Mines he 

 told Sir Henry De la Beche that he " didn't care for 

 fossils," the mechanism of the living animal alone in- 

 teresting him. But it came to pass that during his 

 thirty-one years' tenure of his post the larger part of 

 his work was palaeontological. And well that this so 

 happened, because, when the battle over organic evo- 

 lution was fought, Huxley was able to adduce out of 

 his treasury of knowledge a mass of evidence from 

 the fossil-yielding rocks which, supplemented by the 

 evidence from embryology, put the theory of " descent 



