THE MAN 53 



able." 1 In 1881, concurrently with the absorption 

 of the School of Mines in what was then called the 

 Normal School, Huxley became Professor of Biology 

 and Dean of the Royal College of Science, claiming 

 thereby, as he jocosely reminded his friends, the title 

 of " The Very Reverend " ; and in the same year he 

 accepted an Inspectorship of Fisheries, which had the 

 advantage of taking him into the fresh air. 



In 1883 he received the highest honour which his 

 fellow-savants could bestow in being elected President 

 of the Royal Society. But the dignity, which he ac- 

 cepted with reluctance, was, on account of bad health, 

 surrendered in November, 1885. He had become 

 more and more the invalid ; holidays had given him 

 only fillips, and the little store of energy which they 

 added was quickly dissipated ; deafness troubled him, 

 bringing its dreaded isolation, and in the previous 

 May, having reached his sixtieth year, an age at which 

 he had often jocosely said that men of science should 

 be pole-axed, lest through ossification of mind they 

 become arrestors of progress, he resigned all his ap- 

 pointments, paid and unpaid, and retired upon a pen- 

 sion of ^1,200 a-year, which, shortly afterwards, was 

 supplemented by a Civil List pension of ^300 a-year. 



But resignation of offices meant not retirement 

 from work. During the ten years of life that re- 



x The Crayfish, p. 3. 



