The Right Hon. T. H. Huxlci/, D.C.L., F.RS. 455 



will not satisfy the scientific mind to say that the develop- 

 ment arises simply from evolution. We know that there 

 are involved a variety of proximate conditions from the 

 incubation of the parent animal (or heat otherwise ob- 

 tained) to the complex causes which lead to the growth 

 and fertilization of the egg itself, and which we can fathom 

 only to a very limited extent. Behind all these, again, lie 

 the causes which produced the parent animal, and these 

 we may have to follow back into past eras of geological 

 time without reaching the first and ultimate cause. All 

 this was clearly before the mind of Huxley ; hence he was 

 not satisfied with the merely analogical argument which 

 seems sufficient to Hieckel and some other biologists, or 

 with the doctrine of struggle for existence and survival 

 of the fittest. The analogy between the cycle of develop- 

 ment of the individual animal and the supposed develop- 

 ment of modern animals in geological time is imperfect, 

 and behind both lies the question — Has the ultimate germ 

 or simple animal hereditary properties ? If it has, we 

 have to look for a parent of more developed organism 

 than itself; if not, then it is a product of creation, or, 

 as Clerk Maxwell phrased it in the case of chemical ele- 

 ments, a "manufactured article." 1 He therefore sought 

 to find the evidence of evolution in the past history of 

 living beings as represented in their fossil remains, where 

 alone, if it is to be found at all, the actual evidence must 

 lie concealed. Here he had, in the long lapse of geological 

 time, an evident development from the simpler to the 

 more complex, along the lines of a scheme or plan which 

 manifestly preserves its unity from the dawn of life on 

 our planet to the present day. It naturally occurred to 

 him that the record, even if imperfect, might show por- 

 tions at least of the links of connectian between successive 

 forms of life. Here, however, he had to distinguish, and 



l This dilemma of evolution was lucidly explained at the meeting of the British 

 Association this year by Miss Layard. 



