148 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY chap, x 



If I may make a suggestion I should say that a catalogue of 

 your museum for popular use should commence with a sketch 

 of the topography and stratigraphy of the county, put into the 

 most intelligible language, and illustrated by reference to min- 

 eral specimens in the cases, and to the localities where sections 

 showing the superposition of such and such beds is to be seen. 

 After that I think should come a list of the most remarkable 

 and interesting fossils, with reference to the cases where they 

 are to be seen; and under the head of each a brief popular ac- 

 count of the kind of animal or plant which the thing was when 

 alive, its probable habits, and its meaning and importance as a 

 member of the great series of successive forms of life. — Yours 

 very faithfully, T. H. Huxley. 



The reorganisation of the course of studies at Jermyn 

 Street, fully sketched out in the 1857 notebook, involved 

 two very serious additions to his work over and above what 

 was required of him by his appointment as Professor. He 

 found his students to a great extent lacking in the know- 

 ledge of general principles necessary to the comprehension 

 of the speicial work before them. To enable them to make 

 the best use of his regular lectures, he offered them in 

 addition a preliminary evening course of nine lectures each 

 January, which he entitled " An Introduction to the Study 

 of the Collection of Fossils in the Museum of Practical 

 Geology." These lectures summed up what he afterwards 

 named Physiography, together with a general sketch of 

 fossils and their nature, the classification of animals and 

 plants, their distribution at various epochs, and the princi- 

 ples on which they are constructed, illustrated by the ex- 

 amination of some animal, such as a lobster. 



The regular lectures, fifty-seven in num.ber, ran from 

 February to April and from April to June, with fortnightly 

 examinations during the latter period, six in number. I 

 take the scheme from his notebook : — " After prolegomena, 

 the physiology and morphology of lobster and dove; then 

 through Invertebrates, Anodon, Actinia, and Vorticella 

 Protozoa, to Molluscan types. Insects, then Vertebrates. 

 Supplemented Paleontologically by the demonstrations of 

 the selected types in the cases; twelve Paleozoic, twelve 



