284 ^^^^ °^ PROFESSOR HUXLEY chap, xix 



1866-67 ; papers on " Two Widely Contrasted Forms of 

 the Human Cranium" of 1866 and 1868; the " Patagonian 

 Skulls " of 1868 ; and " Some Fixed Points in British 

 Ethnology " of 1871— 



His published ethnological papers (says Sir Michael Foster) 

 are not numerous, nor can they be taken as a measure of his in- 

 fluence on this branch of study. In many ways he has made 

 himself felt, not the least by the severity with which on the one 

 hand he repressed the pretensions of shallow persons who, tak- 

 ing advantage of the glamour of the Darwinian doctrine, talked 

 nonsense in the name of anthropological science, and on the 

 other hand, exposed those who in the structure of the brain or 

 of other parts, saw an impassable gulf between man and the 

 monkey. The episode of the " hippocampus " stirred for a while 

 not only science but the general public. He used his influence, 

 already year by year growing more and more powerful, to keep 

 the study of the natural history of man within its proper lines, 

 and chiefly with this end in view held the Presidential Chair 

 of the Ethnological Society in 1869-70. It was mainly through 

 his influence that this older Ethnological Society was, a year 

 later, in 1871, amalgamated with a newer rival society, the 

 Anthropological, under the title of " The Anthropological In- 

 stitute." 



During this time he was constantly occupied with 

 paleontological work, as , the following letter to Sir C. 

 Lyell indicates — 



Jermyn Street, Nov. 27, 1865. 



My dear Sir Charles — I returned last night from a hasty 

 journey to Ireland, whither I betook myself on Thursday night, 

 being attracted vulture-wise by the scent of a quantity of car- 

 boniferous corpses. The journey was as well worth the trouble 

 as any I ever undertook, seeing that in a morning's work I 

 turned out ten genera of vertebrate animals of which five are 

 certainly new ; and of these four are Labyrinthodonts, amphibia 

 of new types. These four are baptised Ophiderpeton, Lepter- 

 peton, Ichthyerpeton, Keraterpeton. They all have ossified 

 spinal columns and limbs. The special interest attaching to the 

 two first is that they represent a typeof Labyrinthodonts hitherto 

 unknown, and corresponding with Siren and Amphiuma among 

 living Amphibia. Ophiderpeton, for example, is like an eel, 

 about three feet long with small fore legs and rudimentary 

 hind ones. 



