NATURE 



257 



THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 5, 1874 



SCIENTIFIC WORTHIES 



11.— Thomas Henry Huxley 



THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY was born at Ealing, 

 on May 4, 1825. With the exception of two and-a- 

 half years spent at the semi-public school at Ealing, of 

 which his father was one of the masters, his education was 

 carried on at home, and in his later boyhood, war 

 chiefly the result of his own efforts. In 1S42 he entered 

 the medical school attached to Charing Cross Hospital, 

 where, at that time, Mr. Wharton Jones, distinguished 

 alike <.s a physiologist and oculist, was lecturing on 

 Physiology. In 1845 Mr. Huxley passed the first M.B. 

 examination at the University of London, and was placed 

 second in the list of honours for Anatomy and Physi- 

 ology, the first place being given to Dr. Ransome, now of 

 Nottingham. After some experience of the duties of his 

 profession among the poor of London, in 1846 he joined 

 the medical service of the Royal Navy, and proceeded to 

 Haslar Hospital. From thence he was selected, through 

 the influence of the distinguished Arctic traveller and 

 naturalist. Sir John Richardson, to occupy the post of 

 Assistant-Surgeon to H.M.S. Ratllesnakii, then about to 

 proceed on a surveying voyage in the Southern Seas. 

 The Rattlesnake, commanded by Captain Owen Stanley, 

 with Mr. MacGillivray as naturalist, sailed from England 

 in the winter of 1S46. She surveyed the Inner Route 

 between the Barrier Reef and the East Coast of Aus- 

 tralia and New Guinea, and after making a voyage of 

 circumnavigation, returned to England in November 

 1850. During this period Mr. Huxley investigated 

 with a success known to all naturalists, the fauna of 

 the seas which he traversed, and sent home several 

 communications, some of which were published in the 

 " Philosophical Transactions " of the Royal Society. 

 The first which so appeared, presented by the late Bishop 

 of Norwich, and read June 21, 1849, bears the title " On 

 the Anatomy and Affinities of the Family of the Me- 

 dusa;." This was, however, not Mr. Huxley's first scientific 

 eflbrt. While yet a student at Charing Cross Hospital, 

 he had sent a brief notice to the Medical Times and 

 Gazette, of that layer in the root-sheath of hair which has 

 since borne the name of Huxley's Layer. Shortly after his 

 return he was (June 1851) elected a Fellow of the Royal 

 Society. 



In 1853 Mr. Huxley, after vainly endeavouring to obtain 

 the publication by the Government of a part of tlie work 

 done during his voyage, left the naval service, and in 

 1854, on the removal of Edward Forbes from the Govern- 

 ment School of Mines to the chair of Natural History 

 at Edinburgh, succeeded his distinguished friend as 

 Professor of Natural History in that institution, a post 

 which he has continued to hold up to the present day. 

 Since that time Mr. Huxley has lived in London a life of 

 continued and brilliant labour. From 1863 to 1869 he 

 held the post of Hunterian Professor at the Royal College 

 of Surgeons. He was twice chosen FuUerian Professor 

 of Physiology at the Royal Institution of Great Britain. 

 In 1869 and 1870 he was President of the Geological 

 Society, having previously served as Secretary. During 

 Vol. IX. — No 223 



the same period he was President of the Ethnological 

 Society. In 1870 he filled the office of President of the 

 British Association for the Advancement of Science, 

 and in 1872 was elected Secretary to the Royal Society.' 

 He has been elected a corresponding member of the 

 Academies of Berlin, Munich, St. Petersburg, and of othei- 

 foreign scientific societies, has received honorary degrees 

 from the Universities of Breslau and Edinburgh, and last 

 year was presented with the Order of the Northern Star 

 by the King of Sweden. Since 1S70 he has been one of 

 the Members of the Royal Commission on Scientific In- 

 struction and the Advancement of Science. From 1870 

 to 1872 he served on the London School Board as one of 

 the members for Marylebonc, and during that time was 

 Chairman of the Education Committee which arrant^ed 

 the scheme of education adopted in the Board Schools. 

 In 1872 he was elected Lord Rector of the University of 

 Aberdeen. 



In this skeleton narrative of the career of this distin- 

 guished naturalist we have purposely omitted any list or 

 any critical estimate of his writings ; but we have great 

 pleasure in laying before our readers, as a token of what 

 is thought of him by those who are labouring in the 

 same field of Science, the following communication from 

 one who ranks in his own country as well as among our- 

 selves as one of the very first of German naturalists. 



The more general, year by year, the interest taken 

 by all educated people in the progress of Natural 

 Science, and the wider, day by day, the field of Science, 

 the more difficult is it for the man of science 

 himself to keep pace with all the advances made— the 

 smaller becomes the number of those who are able to 

 take a bird's-eye view of the whole field of science, and 

 in whose minds the higher interest of the philosophical 

 importance of the whole is not lost amid a crowd of 

 fascinating particulars. Indeed if at the present moment 

 we run over the names distinguished in the several 

 sciences into which Natural Knowledge may'^be divided 

 — in Physics, in Chemistry, in Botany, in Zoology — wc 

 find but few investigators who can be said to have 

 thoroughly mastered the whole range of any one of them. 

 Among these few we must place Thomas Henry Huxley, 

 the di'.tinguished British investigator, who at the present 

 time justly ranks as the first zoologist among his country- 

 men. When we say the first zoologist, we give the widest 

 and fullest signification to the word " zoology " which the 

 latest developments of this science demand. Zoology is, 

 in this sense, the entire biology of animals ; and we ac- 

 cordingly consider as essential parts of it the whole field 

 of Animal Morphology and Physiology, including not only 

 Comparative Anatomy and Embryology, but also Syste- 

 matic Zoology, Pateontology and Zoological Philosophy. 

 We look upon it as a special merit in Prof. Huxley that he 

 has a thoroughly broad conception of the science in which 

 he labours, and that, with a most careful empirical acciuaint^ 

 ance with individual phenomena, he combines a clear 

 philosophical appreciation of general relations. 



When we consider the long series of distinguished 

 memoirs with which, during the last quarter of a century. 

 Prof Huxley has enriched zoological literature, we find that 

 in each of the larger divisions of the animal kingdom we 

 are indebted to him for important discoveries. 



