NATURE 
THURSDAY, JULY 10, 1902. 
THE RECORD OF HUXLEY’S SCIENTIFIC 
WORK. 
The Scientific Memoirs of Thomas Henry Huxley. 
Vol. iv. Edited by Sir Michael Foster and Prof. 
E. Ray Lankester. Pp. 689; pls. 28. (London: 
Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 1902.) Price 30s. net. 
HE present volume is the fourth of the promised 
series, and contains a collection of the scientific 
memoirs, addresses, and reviews, by Huxley, published 
throughout the period ranging from the early part of the 
year 1874 until his death. The first item reproduced is 
that on the skull and heart of Menobranchus, the last 
the masterly addendum to the life of Richard Owen, 
with the tenour of which our readers have long been 
familiar (NATURE, vol. li., p. 169). When it is said that 
the intervening memoirs include those on ‘“ Ceratodus 
and the Classification of Fishes”; on “ The Craniofacial 
Apparatus of the Lamprey” ; on “ The Classification and 
Distribution of the Cray Fishes”; on ‘‘ The Cranial and 
Dental Characters of the Canidze” (with its prophetic 
passage on the future of the systematist); on “The 
Application of the Laws of Evolution to the Vertebrata” 
(than which Huxley never wrote a finer philosophic 
treatise) ; on “ The Gentians” (which to the systematic 
botanists, headed by Hooker and the late Prof. Baillon, 
who heard it read, came as a surprise); and, finally, 
the last zoological paper which Huxley wrote, “Some 
further Observations on the Genus Hyperodapedon,” it 
is evident that some of his very best work is in this 
volume brought before the reader. 
By way of general comment, we need only say that the 
standard of the former yolumes, upon which we have 
more than once passed favourable judgment, has been 
maintained, except; perhaps, that plates 1 to 3 have 
suffered somewhat, from the lack of blue-grey colour 
bestowed upon their originals. 
In reviewing the volume which preceded the present 
one, we took occasion (NATURE, vol. .Ixiv., p. 76) to 
comment on the imperfection of the published list which 
the editors originally caused to be circulated in making 
their intentions known. We are pleased to find that of 
the three omissions to which we then more particularly 
drew attention, two have been made good, chief among 
them being the Survey memoir on “The Crocodilians of 
the Elgin Sandstones,” which in the present volume 
monopolises seventeen of the twenty-eight plates pro- 
vided. One omission upon which we dwelt they have 
passed over, viz. the Rede lecture on “ Animal Forms,” 
delivered at Cambridge in 1883 and duly reported in these 
columns (NATURE, vol. xxviii. p. 187); and we would 
remark that, if only on account of the absence of this, 
the words “THE END” with which the present volume 
closes cannot mark the completion of the editors’ task, if 
justice is to be done to the life’s record in science of the 
great man whose teachings the memorialists have de- 
cided to perpetuate. 
To proceed, let it be said that, in addition to the 
omission just named there are at least six other of 
Huxley’s scientific writings which we consider should 
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241 
have found recognition in the present volume. In seeking 
comparison with other published works dealing with 
Huxley’s career, we naturally turn to the bibliographic 
record given in the “ Life and Letters” by his son; and 
there we find duly listed addresses on “The Hypothesis 
that Animals are Automata and its History” and on 
“The Geological History of Birds,” which our editors 
have either overlooked or withheld. The latter, a Royal 
Institution lecture, was first delivered in America and 
published in full in “‘American Addresses”; and it is signi- 
ficant that of the five addresses this book contains, the 
only one the present volume bears (¢.e. that on “ The 
Study of Biology”) was reprinted elsewhere. The 
address on “Animals as Automata” was reported in 
NATURE (vol. iv. p. 362), and with elaboration was 
printed in “Science and Culture,” side by side with the 
article on “ Sensation and the Unity of Structure of the 
Sensiferous Organs,” which our editors reproduce. We 
submit that both it and the three American addresses on 
“Evolution” should have been included in the present 
volume, since they give expression to the working of 
Huxley’s mind on the realisation of a complete evolu- 
tionary series—z.e. the equine. About the Baltimore 
address, which the “American Addresses ” volume also 
contains, opinions may differ. 
Far more serious, however, is the omission, both from 
its proper place in vol. ii. and from the present 
volume, of the great Geological Survey memoir (decade 
xii.) bearing title ‘‘ Illustrations of the Structure of the 
Crossopterygian Ganoids,” which, with the Rede lecture 
aforementioned, is not listed in even the “Life and 
Letters”; and we are at a loss to conceive by what 
process other than a too exclusive reliance upon the 
Royal Society Catalogue of Scientific Papers (which for 
the period concerned is defective) this oversight, resulting 
in the omission of one of the most important and far- 
reaching memoirs Huxley ever wrote, can be explained, 
especially when it is seen that the editors have duly 
incorporated its preliminary correlate in its proper place. 
Nor is this all. Huxley’s lecture before the Fisheries 
Exhibition at Norwich in 1881 is duly reproduced, but 
why not that of 1883, which marked the opening of the 
congresses of the Exhibition at South Kensington, 
perhaps the more important of the two? This omission 
is the more unfortunate, since, in the hands of Prof. 
McIntosh, the chief conclusion reached has but lately 
become the leading theme in rival controversy among 
fishery experts. And it is pertinent to this to remark that 
the memoir on the Belemnitida, to which we alluded 
in reviewing vol. iii., and which at the outset escaped 
recognition, similarly contains the striking observation 
that the genus Belemnites, if a Decapod, is numerically 
deficient in “arms,” and that this but a month or so ago, 
in the hands of Huxley’s pupil Crick, has led to a 
startling generalisation, which we can _ personally 
confirm. 
The editors announced in their original prospectus I51 
contributions in all—they have printed 163. In doing so 
they have shown themselves to have been originally 
lacking by twelve. We have shown that others have yet 
to be reprinted, if the work is to be “complete” as was 
originally resolved, and to depict worthily the scientific 
labours of the great man whose reputation in the domain 
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