ISO 



LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY chap, x 



first address at the Working Men's College to an audience, 

 as he notes, of some fifty persons, including Maurice him- 

 self. 



Other work of importance was connected with the Royal 

 Institution. He had been elected to deliver the triennial 

 course as Fullerian Professor, and for his subject in 1856-57 

 chose Physiology and Comparative Anatomy; in 1858, the 

 Principles of Biology. 



He was extremely glad of the additional " grist to the 

 mill " brought in by these lectures. As he wrote in 1890: — 



I have good reason to know what difference a hundred a 

 year makes when your income is not more than tour or five 

 times that. I remember when I was candidate fo%the Fullerian 

 professorship some twenty-three years ago, a friend of mine 

 asked a wealthy manager to support me. He promised, but 

 asked the value of the appointment, and when told, said, " Well, 

 but what's the use of a hundred a year to him ? " I suppose he 

 paid his butler that. 



A further attempt to organise scientific work throughout 

 the country and make its results generally known, dates 

 from this time. Huxley, Hooker, and Tyndall had dis- 

 cussed, early in 1858, the possibility of starting a Scientific 

 Review, which should do for science what the Quarterly 

 or the Westminster did for literature. The scheme was found 

 not to be feasible at the time, though it was revived in 

 another form in i860 ; so in the meanwhile it was arranged 

 that science should be laid before the public every fortnight, 

 through the medium of a scientific column in the Saturday 

 Review. The following letter bears on this proposal : — 



April 20, 1858. 



My dear Hooker — Before the dawn of the proposal for the 

 ever-memorable though not-to-be Scientific Review, there had 

 been some talk of one or two of us working the public up for 

 science through the Saturday- Review. Maskelyne (you know 

 him, I suppose) was the suggester of the scheme, and undertook 

 to talk to the Saturday people about it. 



I thought the whole affair had dropped through, but yester- 

 day Maskelyne came to me and to Ramsay with definite propo- 

 sitions from the Saturday editor. 



