254 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. III. No. 60. 



undoubtedly indebted for success in the 

 many intellectual duels he was destined to 

 be engaged in. His ' regular school training 

 was of the briefest,' and he has expressed a 

 very poor opinion of it. His early inclina- 

 tion was to be a mechanical engineer, but 

 he was put to a brother-in-law to study 

 medicine. The only part of his professional 

 course which really interested him was 

 physiology, which he has defined as ' the 

 mechanical engineering of living machines.' 

 The only instruction from which he thought 

 he ever obtaiued the proper effect of educa- 

 tion was that received from Mr. Wharton 

 Jones, who was the lecturer on physiology 

 at the Charing Cross School of Medicine. 

 At Mr. Jones' suggestion, in 1845, Huxley 

 communicated to the Medical Gazette (p. 

 1340) his first paper ' On a hitherto unde- 

 scribed structure in the human hair sheath.' 

 Two years later he contributed to the 

 British Association for the Advancement 

 of Science the first paper generally attri- 

 buted to him — ' Examination of the cor- 

 puscles of the blood of Amphioxus.' (Ab- 

 stracts, p. 95.) In 1845 he passed the 

 first M. B. examination at the London 

 University. Soon afterwards he was ad- 

 mitted into the medical service of the Navy 

 and was, after some waiting, assigned to 

 the Rattlesnake, and for four years (1846- 

 50) served on her during her exploration 

 of the Australasian seas ; he was, he sup- 

 posed, among the last voyagers ' to whom 

 it could be possible to meet with people 

 who knew nothing of firearms — as [they] 

 did on the south coast of New Guinea.' 



While on board Huxley zealously prose- 

 cuted zoological investigations and in 1849 

 and 1850 sent records of observations, es- 

 pecially on ccelenterates, in papers which 

 were published in the ' Philosophical Trans- 

 actions' and 'Annals of Natural History.' 

 Most important of all was a monograph on 

 the Oceanic Hydrozoa published by the 

 Kay Society. It is amusing to find that 



while in Sydney he was impressed by Mac- 

 Leay and led to believe that "there is a great 

 law hidden in the ' Circular system ' if we 

 could but get at it, perhaps in Quinarianism 

 too,"* but sober sense doubtless soon came 

 to the rescue and he appears to have been 

 never otherwise touched by the strange 

 monomania that had been epidemic in Eng- 

 land during the previous quarter century. In 

 1851 he became a F. E. S. He continued in 

 the navy three years after his return, but 

 in 1853 resigned when ordered to sea again. 



In 1853 Huxley and Tyndall became can- 

 didates for professorships in the University 

 of Toronto, but that University preferred 

 others for the vacant places and thus 

 missed the opportunity of an age. In 1854 

 Huxley was appointed to the post of 

 paleontologist and lecturer on natural 

 history in the School of Mines which he 

 held for the next thirty-one years. In the 

 same year he became Fullerian Professor to 

 the Eoyal Institution. " The first impor- 

 tant audience [he] ever addressed was at 

 the Royal Institution." In 1862 he served 

 as President of the Biological Section, 

 and in 1870 of the ' British Association 

 for the Advancement of Science ' itself, in 

 1869 and 1870 of the Geological and Ethno- 

 logical Societies, and in 1883 to 1885 of the 

 Royal Society. He was Inspector of Sal- 

 mon Fisheries fi-om 1881 to 1885. 



In 1876 he visited the United States and 

 delivered an address at the opening of the 

 Johns Hopkins University. 



In 1885 failing health and desire for 

 freedom led him to retire from most of his 

 ofi&ces and thenceforth he devoted himself 

 chiefly to literary work rather than to sci- 

 entific investigation. On the accession of 

 Lord Salisbury to the Premiership in 1892, 

 Huxley was made Privy Counsellor, and 

 with it came the title of Right Honorable, 

 by which he was later styled. In the last 

 years of life he resided at Hodeslea, East- 



*Ann. Mag. Nat. Hist. (2), VI., p. 67. 



