CHAPTER IV 



BEGINNING OF PROFESSORIAL WORK IN LONDON 

 [1854-8]. 



The year 1854 was a memorable one in many ways for 

 Huxley. His friend Edward Forbes was appointed to 

 an Edinburgh chair, and he succeeded him in London 

 as Lecturer in Natural History in the Royal School of 

 Mines with a stipend of ;^20o per annum, and later in 

 the year became Naturalist to the Geological Survey at 

 a commencing salary of like amount. He was also ap- 

 pointed Lecturer in Comparative Anatomy at St. Thomas's 

 Hospital. Huxley always held very strongly that London 

 was the best centre for scientific purposes, and proved 

 true to his convictions by spending the rest of his work- 

 ing life there, though he might, to his financial benefit, 

 have become a professor in Edinburgh University. 

 The death of Forbes later in the year was a heavy blow 

 to him, and, by organizing a memorial fund, he helped 

 to perpetuate the memory of one who had been his 

 warmest and most loyal friend among the senior natura- 

 lists of that time. 



By a singularly ironical stroke of fate, the Govern- 

 ment grant which the Royal Society, for technical 

 reasons, felt unable to award while he was still in the 

 service of the Navy was now given him. The sum 

 assigned was ;£'3oo, and the Ray Society undertook to 

 defray any further expense, and to publish the detailed 

 investigations for which this grant was needed. The 

 much-delayed monograph was not published, however 



24 



