476 
SUMMARY OF CURRENT RESEARCHES RELATING TO 
Prof. Abbe. At his instigation, in the year 1881, Dr. Otto Schott com- 
menced his experiments in the preparation of optical glass of varying 
refraction and dispersion. These experiments were brought to a suc- 
cessful conclusion in the year 1883, when the glass works of Schott and 
Genossen were definitely established. 
Up to the year 1890 the Jena Institute concerned itself only with 
microscopical optics. What advances were made in this department, 
thanks to the theoretical and experimental investigations of Prof. Abbe, 
are well known. Since the year 1890, however, the firm has undertaken 
the construction of other optical instruments. In the first place must 
be mentioned the photographic objectives, and especially the Zeiss 
anastigmatic, of which within the last four years over 10,000 have been 
made. Dr. P. Rudolph is the scientific manager of this department. 
A third department, of which Dr. C. Pulfrich is the head, is devoted 
to the construction of optical and mechanical measuring instruments. 
Last year the firm began the construction of the new kind of binocular 
field-glass described ante , pp. 360-2. 
Professor Huxley.- — Although our Fellows will have, no doubt, read 
various accounts of the life of this great naturalist, it is right that we 
should have in our own Journal some notice of our distinguished Honorary 
Fellow. Born at Ealing in 1825, without any exceptional advantages 
of schooling, indeed to judge from his own account rather the opposite, 
Thomas Henry Huxley became a student of medicine at the Charing 
Cross Hospital. On the teaching staff of that school there was then 
Mr. Wharton Jones, whose physiological teaching seems to have made 
a deep impression on the young medical student. It was at Jones’s 
advice that Huxley’s first little paper, an account of “ Huxley’s layer ” at 
the base of human hair, was published. Greatly to his good fortune, 
Huxley attracted the notice of Sir John Richardson, and was by him 
placed as assistant-surgeon on board H.M.S. 4 Rattlesnake.’ The captain 
of this exploring vessel was Owen Stanley, who was a brother of the late 
Dean Stanley, and had many of the talents and social virtues of his 
family, while the naturalist on board was the distinguished Macgillivray. 
From 1846 to 1850 the 4 Rattlesnake ’ was engaged in exploring the 
waters near the Great Barrier Reef of Australia and the islands in 
the Pacific. The young assistant-surgeon had numerous opportunities 
of studying the life of the ocean, and when he returned home he found 
that his accounts of various Medusas had lifted him into a position of 
some authority among the younger naturalists of his time. Among 
those with whom he associated was Edward Forbes, who had the highest 
regard for the abilities of his young friend, and when Forbes was in 
1856 appointed Professor of Natural History at Edinburgh, Huxley was 
selected as his successor as Lecturer on Natural History at the Royal 
School of Mines, and Paleontologist to the Geological Survey. In his 
interesting autobiographical sketch Huxley tells us that he took this 
post with a notice that he would give it up as soon as he could obtain 
one in which he could devoted himself to physiology ; but he held the 
offices for thirty-one years, and a large part of his work was palaeonto- 
logical. So capable was this young naturalist of filling the post of 
lecturer on natural history, that his first course of lectures was printed 
in the Medical Times and Gazette for 1856 and 1857, and was for many 
