1895.] Scientific News. 781 
1871, and later of a Manual of the Anatomy of the Invertebrata; 
and “Critiques and Addresses,” 1873. 
On the death of Mr. Spottiswoode in 1884, Professor Huxley was 
elected President of the Royal Society. 
Professor Huxley was a skillful taxonomist, and on the whole the 
best that England hasever produced. His conclusions in this direction 
have in many instances met with general acceptance, and there was 
never any difficulty in understanding exactly what he intended to pre- 
sent. His mind was clear, and his method of presentation equally so. 
He elucidated every subject which he investigated. 
The same clearness and logic were apparent in his treatment of 
philosophical questions. He was one of that class whose reflective pow- 
ers were equal to those of observation. While exposing obscurities 
and inconsistencies in popular beliefs, he showed his superior self con- 
trol and intellectual honesty in that he did not make assertions as to 
matters on which the evidence is insufficient. Hence in theology, 
while declaring himself a free-thinker, he did not deny the possibility 
that some popular beliefs might be true. For this attitude of mind he 
proposed the term “ agnostic,” a word which expresses the ignorance 
of the honest thinker with regard to questions, which lack of sufficient 
evidence renders at present insoluble. His care not to overstep the 
boundaries of knowledge in any direction was admirable, for thus he 
left the door open to progress in all directions. 
An authorized edition of the works of Huxley, in nine volumes, is 
now in course of publication. In this edition his essays are collected 
under various heads, each of which gives its title toa volume. The 
fourth volume is entitled “Science and Hebrew Tradition,” and has 
a preface written for it by the author, in which he gives his statement 
of what is the object of the essays and what he supposes they estab- 
lish :— 
“Tt is becoming, if it has not become, impossible for men of clear 
intellect and adequate instruction to believe, and it has ceased or is 
ceasing to be possible for such men honestly to say they believe, that the 
universe came into being in the fashion described in the first chapter 
of Genesis; or to accept as a literal truth the story of the making of 
woman, with the account of the catastrophe which followed hard upon 
it, in the second chapter; or to admit that the earth was repeopled 
with terrestrial inhabitants by migration from Armenia or Kurdistan, 
little more than four thousand years ago, which is implied in the eighth 
chapter.” 
A : 
Dr. Lewis Janes, President of the Ethical Society of Brooklyn, with 
