178 Thomas Henry Husley. 
From 1863 to 1869, he was Hunterian professor at the Royal 
College of Surgeons, and was president of the Geological Society 
of London in 1869 and 1870. For three years, beginning with 
1872, he was Lord Rector of Aberdeen University, and in 1875 
and 1876 was acting professor of natural history in the Uni- 
versity of Edinburgh. In 1870, he was president of the 
British Association for the Advancement of Science. From 
1870 to 1872, he was a member of the London School Board, 
where, as chairman of the educational committee, he rendered 
important services. He was elected president of the Royal 
Society in 1883, having previously served as its secretary. 
From 1881 to 1885, he was Inspector of Salmon Fisheries. 
He resigned this and other offices in 1885, owing to impaired 
health, and shortly after removed from London to Eastbourne, 
on the Sussex coast, where he passed the remainder of his life. 
The ten years after his return to England in 1850 were 
devoted to brilliant investigations in several departments of 
natural science and to many popular lectures, which won for him 
high rank in the scientific world. With this came various 
official positions, the arduous duties of which he faithfully per- 
formed. His publications during this period were numerous 
and important, but need not be enumerated here. 
With the appearance of Darwin’s great work on the Origin 
of Species, a new field was opened to Huxley, which he 
entered with masterly zeal. He accepted at once the theory 
of Natural Selection, and applied it to the evolution of the 
human race, giving his first results in his lectures to working 
men, in 1860, at the Museum of Practical Geology. These 
lectures, which led to bitter controversy, were published in 
1863, under the title, Evidence as to Man’s Place in Nature. 
For several years, the battle over Darwin’s views raged fiercely, 
and Huxley was the leader who repelled the assaults of both 
theologians and scientific conservatives. After this victory 
was won, he still continued the struggle by carrying the war 
into new fields, involving all the relations between science and 
religion, and this contest he carried on vigorously until failing 
health caused him to give up all intellectual work. 
Haeckel, the leading biologist on the Continent, ably 
reviewed, in 1874, Huxley’s scientific work up to that time, 
and the following brief extracts will serve to indicate his 
appreciation of it: 
‘When we consider the long series of distinguished memoirs 
with which, during the last quarter of a century, Prof. Huxley 
has enriched zodlogical literature, we find that in each of the 
larger divisions of the animal kingdom we are indebted to him 
for important discoveries. 
