112 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY chap, vil 



a new spirit of anatomical inquiry, not wholly free from a 

 timorous apprehension as to its complete validity." * For 

 the difiference between this and the labours of the greatest 

 English comparative anatomist of the time, whose detailed 

 work was of the highest value, but whose generalisations 

 and speculations, based on the philosophy of Oken, proved 

 barren and fruitless, lay in the fact that Huxley, led to it 

 doubtless by his solitary readings in his Charing Cross days, 

 had taken up the method of von Baer and Johannes Miiller, 

 then almost unknown, or at least unused in England — " the 

 method which led the anatomist to face his problems in the 

 spirit in which the physicist faced his." 



He had been warned by Forbes not to speak too strongly 

 about the dilatoriness of the Government in the matter of 

 the grant, so he writes : " I will ' roar you like any sucking 

 dove ' at the dinner, though I felt tempted otherwise." On 

 December i he tells how he carried out this advice. 



My dear Forbes — You will, I know, like to learn how I got 

 on yesterday. The President's address to me had been drawn 

 up by Bell. It was, of course, too flattering, but he had taken 

 hold of the right points in my work — at least I thought so. 



Bunsen spoke very well for Humboldt. 



There was a capital congregation at the dinner — sixty or 

 seventy Fellows there. . . . 



When it came to my turn to i^turn thanks, I believe I made 

 a very tolerable speechification, at least everybody says so. Lord 

 Rosse had alluded to " science having to take care of itself in 

 this country," and in winding up I gave them a small screed 

 upon that text. That you may see I kept your caution in mind, 

 I will tell you as nearly as may be what I said. I told them 

 that I could not conceive that anything I had hitherto done 

 merited the honour of that day (I looked so preciously meek over 



* "In these papers (on the Medusae) you have for the first time 

 fully developed their structure, and laid the foundation of a rational 

 theory for their classification." " In your second paper ' On the Anat- 

 omy of Salpa and Pyrosoma,' the phenomena, etc., have received the 

 most ingenious and elaborate elucidation, and have given rise to a 

 process of reasoning, the results of which can scarcely yet be antici- 

 pated, but must bear in a very important degree upon some of the 

 most abstruse points of what may be called transcendental physiology." 

 See Royal Society, Obituary Notices, vol. lix. p. 1. 



