i872 ELEMENTARY INSTRUCTION IN BIOLOGY 409 



Huxley's method of teaching was based upon the personal 

 examination by the student of certain " types " of animals and 

 plants selected with a view of illustrating the various groups. 

 But, in his lectures, these types were not treated as the isolated 

 things they necessarily appear in a laboratory manual or an 

 examination syllabus ; each, on the contrary, took its proper 

 place as an example of a particular grade of structure, and no 

 student of ordinary intelligence could fail to see that the types 

 were valuable, not for themselves, but simply as marking, so to 

 speak, the chapters of a connected narrative. Moreover, in 

 addition to the types, a good deal of work of a more general 

 character was done. Thus, while we owe to Huxley more than 

 to anyone else the modern system of teaching biology, he is by 

 no means responsible for the somewhat arid and mechanical 

 aspect it has assumed in certain quarters. 



The application of the same system to botanical teaching 

 was inaugurated in 1873, when, being compelled to go 

 abroad for his health, he arranged that Mr. (now Sir W.) 

 Thiselton Dyer should take his place and lecture on 

 botany. 



The Elementary Instruction in Biology, published in 1875, 

 was a text-book based upon this system. This book, in 

 writing which Huxley was assisted by his demonstrator, 

 H. N. Martin, was reprinted thirteen times before 1888, 

 when it was " Revised and Extended by Howes and Scott," 

 his later assistants. The revised edition is marked by one 

 radical change, due to the insistence of his demonstrator, 

 the late Prof. Jeffery Parker. In the first edition, the lower 

 forms of life were first dealt with ; from simple cells — 

 amoeba,, yeast-plant, blood-corpuscule — the student was 

 taken through an ascending series of plants and of animals, 

 ending with the frog or rabbit. But " the experience of 

 the Lecture-room and the Laboratory taught me," writes 

 Huxley in the new preface, " that philosophical as it might 

 be in theory, it had defects in practice." The process might 

 be regarded as not following the scientific rule of proceeding 

 from the known to the unknown ; while the small and 

 simple organisms required a skill in handling high power 

 microscopes which was difficult for beginners to acquire. 

 Hence the course was reversed, and began with the more 



