338 In Memoriam — Professor Suxley. 



Assistant-Surgeon to H.M.S. " Eattlesnake," under the command of 

 Captain Owen Stanley (brother of the late Dean Stanley), com- 

 missioned to survey the intricate passage within the Barrier Eeef 

 skirting the eastern shores of Australia, and to explore the sea lying 

 between the northern end of that reef and New Guinea. It was 

 the best apprenticeship to what was eventually to be the work of 

 Huxley's life, the solution of biological problems and the indication 

 of their far-reaching significance. 



Two of his warmest friends, Darwin and Hooker, had passed 

 through a like curriculum, the former as Naturalist to the " Beagle " 

 on her voyage round the world in 1831, and the latter as Assistant- 

 Surgeon on board the " Erebus " on her Antarctic expedition in 

 1839. Eventually the three stood shoulder to shoulder when the 

 battle against the immutability of species was fought. 



The voyage lasted from 1847 to 1850, and was the initiation 

 of Huxley's scientific career. Some of the results of the studies 

 in Natural History, for which the cruise afforded facilities, were 

 transmitted to the Linnean and Koyal Societies, and were in due 

 course published in their Transactions. 



Eeturning to England in 1850, Mr. Huxley was, in the following 

 year, elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, and in 1852 he was 

 presented with one of the Eoyal Medals annually awarded by the 

 Society. In 1854 he received the appointment of Professor of 

 Natural History, including Palasontology, in the Eoyal School 

 of Mines and Curator of the fossil Collections in the Museum of 

 Geology, Jermyn Street ; and in the same year that of Fullerian 

 Professor of Physiology and Comparative Anatomy to the University 

 of London. 



In 1856 he accompanied his friend Professor Tyndall in his first 

 visit to the glaciers of the Alps, and with him read a joint paper 

 on Glacial Phenomena, published in the Philosophical Transactions 

 in 1857. In 1858 he was appointed Croonian Lecturer to the Eoyal 

 Society, when he took for his subject " The Theory of the Vertebrate 

 Skull." In 1859 his monograph on "The Ocean Hydrozoa, a de- 

 scription of the Calycophoridee and Physophoridae observed during 

 the voyage of H.M.S. ' Eattlesnake,' " was published by the Eay 

 Society. In 1860 Prof. Huxley delivered a course of lectures to 

 working-men, in Jermyn Street, on " The Relation of Man to the 

 Lower Animals." The questions arising out of this topic became 

 the subject of warm controversy at the meeting of the British 

 Association at Oxford between Bishop Wilberforce and Professor 

 Huxley, and was taken up by others in that and subsequent years. 

 The whole discussion appeared in the work entitled "' Evidence of 

 Man's place in Nature" (1863), and excited great popular interest 

 both in this country and abroad. Mr. Darwin's views on the origin 

 of species formed Professor Huxley's subject for his lectures to 

 working-men in 1862, subsequently published under the title, " On 

 our knowledge of the Causes of the Phenomena of Organic Nature." 

 His other lectures were on the "Elements of Comparative Anatomy" 

 and on the " Classification of Animals and the Vertebrate Skull." 



