THE DISCOVERER 65 



to his biography. ] The fact is, he loomed so large 

 in the public eye as the most luminous expositor of 

 the theory of organic evolution, as the proclaimer of 

 its significance, and as the protagonist in the great 

 revolution which it has brought about, that the im- 

 portance of his discoveries in biology is obscured. 

 And there is further explanation, which is given by 

 Mr. Chalmers Mitchell in his admirable monograph, 

 Thomas Henry Huxley : a Sketch of his Life and 

 Work. He says : — 



The years that have passed since 1850 have seen 

 not only the most amazing progress in our knowledge 

 of comparative anatomy, but almost a revolution in 

 the methods of studying it. Huxley's work has been 

 incorporated in the very body of science. A large 

 number of later investigators have advanced upon the 

 lines he laid down ; and just as the superstructures of 

 a great building conceal the foundations, so later 

 anatomical work, although it has only amplified and 

 extended Huxley's discoveries, has made them seem 

 less striking to the modern reader. The present 

 writer, for instance, learned all that he knows of 

 anatomy in the last ten years, and until he turned to 

 it for the purpose of this volume he had never re- 

 ferred to Huxley's original paper. [Mr. Chalmers 

 Mitchell is here speaking of the Memoir on the 

 Medusae.] When he did so, he found from beginning 

 to end nothing that was new to him, nothing that was 

 strange ; all the ideas in the memoir had passed into 

 the currency of knowledge, and he had been taught 

 them as fundamental facts. It was only when he 



»II. 460-470. 



