30 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. II 



years afterwards was delighted at being able to do 

 him a good turn, by helping to obtain a pension for 

 him. But although in retrospect he condemns the 

 fitfulness of his energies and his want of system, 

 which left much to be learned afterwards which 

 might with advantage have been learned then, still 

 it was his energy that struck his contemporaries. 

 I have a story from one of them that when the other 

 students used to go out into the court of the hospital 

 after lectures were over, they would invariably catch 

 sight of young Huxley's dark head at a certain 

 window bent over a microscope while they amused 

 themselves outside. The constant silhouette framed 

 in the outlines of the window tickled the fancy of 

 the young fellows, and a wag amongst them dubbed 

 it with a name that stuck, " The Sign of the Head 

 and Microscope." 



The scientific paper, too, which he mentions, was 

 somewhat remarkable under the circumstances. It 

 is not given to every medical student to make an 

 anatomical discovery, even a small one. In this case 

 the boy of nineteen, investigating things for himself, 

 found a hitherto undiscovered membrane in the root 

 of the human hair, which received the name of 

 Huxley's layer. 



Speculations, too, such as had filled his mind in 

 early boyhood, still haunted his thoughts. In one 

 of his letters from the Rattlesnake, he gives an account 

 of how he was possessed in his student days by that 

 problem which has beset so many a strong imagina- 



