REVIEWS. 41 



from giving the introductory views and general statements expected^ 

 in an elementary work, and adapted for beginners, as it is from being 

 an arranged statement of full details on the various branches of the 

 proposed subject. It seems rather to be a collection of treatises on 

 obscure or much disputed points of the science in which the author 

 examines the different opinions maintained, and endeavours contro- 

 versially to establish his own views. We by no means object to the 

 plan pursued. We feel sure that the advanced student of compara- 

 tive anatomy and physiology will read the lectures with deep interest 

 and great profit, but if the title should lead any one to expect an 

 elementary treatise, it must occasion disappointment. 



Professor Huxley's general doctrine of classification is not one from 

 which we could anticipate the best results. He is disposed to favour 

 a classification — one among many possible ones, instead of seeking 

 the classification which truly expresses the relations really existing 

 among the several parts of the animal kingdom ; and relying for his 

 purpose on a few definite characters, he expects every included object 

 exactly to conform to a precise definition, whilst we believe that every 

 truly natural assemblage of objects is marked by a group of characters 

 all of them manifest in the more typical forms but in deviative exam- 

 ples gradually fading out, so that one fails here another there, though 

 on the whole the object must be referred to that and no other divi- 

 sion. We cannot recognise strongly marked dividing lines as occur- 

 ring in nature, and we are persuaded that exacting strict conformity 

 to a precise structural definition must of necessity make any principle 

 of classification worthless for its best purposes. In the important 

 portion of his work which relates to the vertebrate skull, we find 

 Professor Huxley opposing himself to the theory, now very generally 

 received of the vertebrate composition of tthe skull. This theory in 

 itself antecedently probable, and supported by facts which he himself 

 sufficiently states, seems to us to have fallen into disfavour with our 

 author, because it has been ably supported and illustrated by Pro- 

 fessor Owen. The malignity, for we can use no milder term, mani- 

 fested in these lectures, as elsewhere, against this profound compara- 

 tive anatomist and great naturalist, is the most objectionable feature 

 of Professor Huxley's work. It is lamentable to see such men as 

 these carrying personal enmity to such extremes. It calls for the 

 grave censure of such as feel that the study of nature ought to lead to 

 harmony and friendly feeling amongst all its votaries, and that if the 



