THE DISCOVERER 95 



technical and lengthy for reproduction here, 1 and, 

 moreover, it suffices to quote Lord Kelvin's admission 

 that his estimate may be insufficient. u I thought," 

 he says in a letter to Nature, " my range from twenty 

 millions to four hundred millions was probably wide 

 enough ; but it is quite possible that I should have 

 put the superior limit a good deal higher, perhaps four 

 thousand instead of four hundred." 2 Apropos of 

 Professor Perry's results, Huxley wrote in a private 

 letter, under date of 6th November, 1894: "I am so 

 much out of the world now that I had not heard of 

 the ' rift within the lute > of the mathematicians. 

 But that a big crack would show itself sooner or later 

 I have never doubted." 



It would be easy to fill many pages of this little 

 volume with a summarised account of Huxley's 

 original work in biology alone, but the examples 

 chosen may be taken to constitute his chief claim to 

 the title of discoverer. They may suffice to show, 

 in the words of the tribute paid to him by Sir 

 Michael Foster and Professor E. Ray Lankester in 

 their preface to the collection of his Scientific 

 Memoirs, that, " apart from the influence exerted by 

 his popular writings, the progress of biology during 



1 For these, see Nature, 3d January, 1 895 ; 24th September, 

 1896. 



''■Nature, 3d January, 1 895. 



