SKETCH OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY. 739 



SKETCH OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY. 1 



By ERNST HAECKEL, 



OF THE UNIVERSITY OF JENA. 



THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY was born at Ealing, on May 4, 

 1825. With the exception of two and a half years spent at the 

 semi-public school at Ealing, of which his father was one of the mas- 

 ters, his education was carried on at home, and in his later boyhood 

 was chiefly the result of his own efforts. In 1842 he entered the 

 medical school attached to Charing Cross Hospital, where, at that 

 time, Mr. Wharton Jones, distinguished alike as a physiologist and 

 oculist, was lecturing on physiology. In 1845 Mr. Huxley passed 

 the first M. B. examination at the University of London, and was 

 placed second in the list of honors for Anatomy and Physiology, the 

 first place being given to Dr. Ransome, now of Nottingham. After 

 some experience of the duties of his profession among the poor of 

 London, in 1846 he joined the medical service of the Royal Navy, and 

 proceeded to Haslar Hospital. Thence he was selected, through the 

 influence of the distinguished arctic traveler and naturalist, Sir 

 John Richardson, to occupy the post of assistant-surgeon to H. M. S. 

 Rattlesnake, then about to proceed on a surveying voyage in the 

 Southern Seas. The Rattlesnake, commanded by Captain Owen 

 Stanley, with Mr. MacGillivray as naturalist, sailed from England in 

 the winter of 1846. She surveyed the Inner Route between the Bar- 

 rier Reef and the East Coast of Australia and New Guinea, and, after 

 making a voyage of circumnavigation, returned to England in No- 

 vember, 1850. During this period Mr. Huxley investigated, with a 

 success known to all naturalists, the fauna of the seas which he trav- 

 ersed, and sent home several communications, some of which were 

 published in the " Philosophical Transactions " of the Royal Society. 

 The first which so appeared, presented by the late Bishop of Nor- 

 wich, and read June 21, 1849, bears the title " On the Anatomy and 

 Affinities of the Family of the Medusae." This was, however, not Mr. 

 Huxley's first scientific effort. While yet a student at Charing Cross 

 Hospital, he had sent a brief notice to the Medical Times and Ga- 

 zette, of that layer in the root-sheath of hair which has since borne the 

 name of Huxley's Layer. Shortly after his return he was (June, 1851) 

 elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. 



In 1853 Mr. Huxley, after vainly endeavoring to obtain the publi- 

 cation by the Government of a part of the work done during his voy- 

 age, left the naval service, and in 1854, on the removal of Edward 

 Forbes from the Government School of Mines to the chair of Natural 



1 From Nature. The first part of this sketch has been supplied by its editor. 



