PRELIMINARY LECTURES 37 



proved to be walking tours in Britain or Switzerland. 

 Considering that he was never robust, and taxed his 

 strength to the utmost by all sorts of work, it is marvellous 

 that he should have accomplished so much, especially 

 when it is remembered that the last ten years of his life 

 (sixty to seventy) were perforce comparatively unproduc- 

 tive, so far as pure science is concerned. 



One result of summer holidays spent in Switzerland 

 with Tyndall during this and the previous year were 

 papers entitled, " Observations on the Structure of Glacier 

 Ice" (Phil. Mag., xiv, 1857, pp. 241-60. Sci. Mem. i, 

 XLVi, p. 482), and " On the Structure and Motion of 

 Glaciers" (Phil. Trans,- Roy. Soc, cxlvii, 1857, pp. 

 327-46. Read January 15, 1857. Sci. Mem. ii, r, p. i). 



Not content with giving his ordinary lectures in Jermyn 

 Street, which many of his students were incapable of fully 

 appreciating owing to want of acquaintance with funda- 

 mental principles, Huxley began in 1857 to give a pre- 

 liminary evening course of nine lectures, with the object 

 of supplying the general knowledge necessary. These 

 lectures consisted of " physiography," together with the 

 preliminaries of palaeontology, and a broad sketch of the 

 classification, distribution, and morphology of organisms. 



His manifold activities now also included the duties in- 

 volved by his position as Examiner in Physiology and 

 Comparative Anatomy to the University of London. 



A Friday Evening Discourse at the Royal Institution 

 was given (May 15) " On the Present State of our Know- 

 ledge as to the Structure and Functions of Nerve " (Proc. 

 Roy. Inst., ii, 1854-8, pp. 432-7. Sci. Mem. i, xxx, 

 p. 315). — In this lecture we have a further indication of 

 strong physiological tendencies. 



In this year too he was elected an honorary member 

 of the Microscopical Society of Giessen and the Academy 



