66 HUXLEY 



turned to the text-books of anatomy and natural his- 

 tory current in Huxley's time that he was able to 

 realise how the conclusions of the young ship- 

 surgeon struck the President and Fellows of the Royal 

 Society as luminous and revolutionary ideas. i 



And again : — 



Huxley's work upon birds, like his work in many 

 other branches of anatomy, has been so overlaid by 

 the investigations of subsequent zoologists that it is 

 easy to overlook its importance. His employment 

 of the skeleton as the basis of classification was suc- 

 ceeded by the work of others who made a similar use 

 of the muscular anatomy, of the intestinal canal, of 

 the windpipe, of the tendons of the feet, and many 

 other structures which display anatomical modifica- 

 tions in different birds. . . . Huxley's anatom- 

 ical work was essentially living and stimulating, and 

 too often it has become lost to sight simply because 

 of the vast superstructures of new facts to which it 

 gave rise. 2 



The centring of Huxley's interest in the apparatus 

 and functions of living things has been named, as also 

 the opportunity for exercise of this which his voyage 

 in the Rattlesnake supplied. The dredge brought 

 him strange dwellers of the deep sea — fantastic in 

 form, delicate in structure, and exquisite in colour. 

 These he sketched with his facile pencil, dissected, 



1 Pp- 34, 35- 



2 lb., p. 137. The third, fifth, and eighth chapters of Mr. 



Chalmers Mitchell's book are to be strongly commended for the 

 clear and accurate account of Huxley's original work which they 

 furnish. 



