48 HUXLEY 



One has impaled a frog, and suffered the creature to 

 writhe about in that condition for hours ; the other 

 has pained the animal no more than one of us would 

 be pained by tying strings round his fingers and keep- 

 ing him in the position of a hydropathic patient. 

 The first offender says, " I did it because I find fish- 

 ing very amusing"; and the magistrate bids him 

 depart in peace, nay, probably wishes him good sport. 

 The second pleads, " I wanted to impress a scientific 

 truth with a distinctness attainable in no other way 

 on the minds of my scholars," and the magistrate 

 fines him five pounds. ! 



From 1870 onward, the time which Huxley had 

 been able to snatch from public and private demands 

 for biological research grew less and less. "For eight 

 years he was continuously on one Royal Commission 

 after another. His administrative work on learned 

 societies continued to increase; in 1869-70 he held 

 the presidency of the Ethnological Society (which, 

 chiefly by his efforts, became merged in the Anthro- 

 pological Institute) ; he was elected president of the 

 Geological Society in 1872; and for nearly ten years, 

 from 187 1 to 1880, he was Secretary of the Royal 

 Society, an office which occupied no small portion of 

 his time and thought." 2 Little wonder, therefore, 

 that his dyspepsia became chronic, compelling a 

 lengthy absence, which, through the generosity of 

 friends, was spent along the Mediterranean seaboard 

 as far as Egypt. 3 Returning thence bronzed and 



1 Coll. Essays, iii. pp. 301, 302. 3 I. 324. 3 I. 367. 



