lxvi PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. [May 1 896, 



this which induced him to seek election on the first London School 

 Board in 1870. Ill-health compelled him to retire from that post 

 in 1872, hut during his period of service as Chairman of the 

 Education Committee he did much to mould the scheme of education 

 adopted in the Board Schools. 



He was elected Secretary of the Boyal Society in 1873, and ten 

 years later was called to the highest honorary position which an 

 English scientific man can fill, the Presidency of that Society. 

 During the absence of the late Prof. Sir Wyville Thomson with 

 the 'Challenger' Expedition, Huxley, in 1875 and 1876, took his 

 place as Professor of Natural History in the University of Edinburgh. 

 From 1881 to 1885 he acted as Inspector of Salmon Eisheries. 

 But this and all his other official posts he resigned in 1885, shortly 

 after which he removed to Eastbourne. 



During the 34 years that elapsed between his return from the 

 ' Rattlesnake ' voyage and his retirement from his various official 

 posts, Huxley's activity as an investigator, as a writer, as a lecturer, 

 as a citizen of London and of England, and as a man of healthy 

 social instincts was incessant. There is hardly a department in the 

 wide field of zoology, in its most comprehensive sense, in which he 

 has not done original work. Huxley's investigations have explained 

 many difficult problems in the mechanism of men and animals. So 

 far as the character of his work is concerned, he is to be compared 

 rather with Owen than with Darwin ; though not only was the quality 

 of his work more solid and enduring, but in many ways his type of 

 mind was essentially different from that of Owen, more liberal, more 

 open, free from what may perhaps be called the pettiness which 

 hampered Owen's scientific vision. Huxley's investigations, it may 

 fairly be said, especially after the publication of the ' Origin of Species,' 

 were to a large extent guided by the Darwinian theory, and the results 

 may be regarded as among the most substantial confirmations and 

 illustrations of the doctrine of evolution as propounded by Darwin. 



In the year before the publication of the * Origin ' he chose as 

 the subject of his Royal Society Croonian Lecture ' The Theory of 

 the Vertebrate Skull,' in which, so high an authority as Prof. 

 Hseckel assures us, he first opened out the right track to a solution 

 of a perplexing problem. Much of Huxley's technical work was 

 published through the Eoyal Society, the Geological Survey, the 

 Geological Society, and other media famiHar to specialists, but seldom 

 consulted — even by the educated general public. To give a mere list 

 of these many memoirs would serve no purpose. Such important 



