RECENT ADVANCES IN SCIENCE. 343 



sweep in electric science since then; Low great the advance in all 

 branches of physics ! To realize the great gap which separates the 

 physics of to-day from the physics of then one has only to call to mind 

 that the world had yet to wait some years before Mayer, and Joule, 

 and Helmholtz, and Grove had said their say. In the books which 

 taught young Huxley the laws of physics he found not a word of that 

 great law of the conservation of energy which, like a lamp, now guides 

 the feet of every physical inquirer, whatever be the special path along 

 which he treads. 



In chemistry much, too, was being done. That science was in the 

 first Hush of success in its attack on the mysteries of organic com- 

 pounds. Liebig, Dumas, and others were rapidly making discoveries 

 of new organic bodies, and dealing with types and substitution, were 

 beginning to make their way into the secrets of chemical constitution; 

 but then, as indeed for a long time afterwards, progress was taking 

 the form of the accumulation of new facts interesting and eminently 

 useful, but still mere facts, rather than of the gaining of insight into 

 those laws of chemical change of which the facts are but tbe expression. 

 And the brilliant success of purely organic chemistry was somewhat 

 prejudicing those inquiries in regions where physics and chemistry 

 touch hands, which in these latter days are producing such striking 

 results. 



In the days of Huxley's studentship neither of these sciences pre- 

 sented such a body of truths as could be readily used as an engine of 

 mental training, nor had the educational mechanism for thus employ- 

 ing them been developed; a chemical laboratory for the student was 

 as yet hardly known, a physical one wholly unknown. The profession 

 turned to these sciences chiefly for the utility of the facts contained in 

 them. The facts of physics, with the exception of those of mechanism, 

 were but rarely appealed to, and if those of chemistry were in more 

 common use, it was because they threw light on the mysteries of the 

 pharmacopoeia, rather than because they helped to solve the problems 

 of the living body. Hence the authority, not without cause, demanded 

 of the student no physics at all, and asked for chemistry only in the 

 midst of his course, when its facts might help him to understand the 

 nature of the drugs which his clinical studies were already bidding him 

 use. 



As regards the biological sciences, the time was also one of chauge, 

 or rather of impending change; the causes of the change were at work, 

 but for the most part were at work below the surface; their effects had 

 not yet become obvious. 



In natural history, in what we sometimes now call biology, in botany, 

 zoology, and comparative anatomy, the activity in systematic and 

 descriptive work was great. The sun of the great Ouvier was setting, 

 but that of our own Eichard Owen was at its zenith; new animal 

 forms, recent and extinct, were daily being described^ the deep was 



