Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume III Part 65

[From this time his letters contain many references to his garden. He is astonished when his gardener asks leave to exhibit at the local show, but delighted with his pluck. Hooker jestingly sends him a plant "which will flourish on any dry, neglected bit of wall, so I think it will just suit you."]

Great improvements have been going on (he writes in 1892), and the next time you come you shall walk in the "avenue" of four box-trees. Only five are to be had for love or money at present, but there are hopes of a sixth, and then the "avenue" will be full ten yards long! Figurez vous ca!

[It was of this he wrote on October 1:--]

Thank Heaven we are settled down again and I can vibrate between my beloved books and even more beloved saxifrages.

The additions to the house are great improvements every way, outside and in, and when the conservatory is finished we shall be quite palatial; but, alas, of all my box-trees only one remains green, that is the "amari," or more properly "fusci" aliquid.

[Sad things will happen, however. Although the local florists vowed that the box-trees would not stand the winds of Eastbourne, he was set on seeing if he could not get them to grow despite the gardeners, whom he had once or twice found false prophets. But this time they were right. Vain were watering and mulching and all the arts of the husbandman. The trees turned browner and browner every day, and the little avenue from terrace to terrace had to be ignominiously uprooted and removed.

A sad blow this, worse even than the following:--]

A lovely clematis in full flower, which I had spent hours in nailing up, has just died suddenly. I am more inconsolable than Jonah!

[He answers some gardening chaff of Sir Michael Foster's:--]

Wait till I cut you out at the Horticultural. I have not made up my mind what to compete in yet. Look out when I do!

[And when the latter offered to propose him for that Society, he replied:--]

Proud an' 'appy should I be to belong to the Horticultural if you will see to it. Could send specimens of nailing up creepers if qualification is required.

[After his long battlings for his early loves of science and liberty of thought, his later love of the tranquil garden seemed in harmony with the dignified rest from struggle. To those who thought of the past and the present, there was something touching in the sight of the old man whose unquenched fires now lent a gentler glow to the peaceful retirement he had at length won for himself. His latter days were fruitful and happy in their unflagging intellectual interests, set off by the new delights of the succidia altera, that second resource of hale old age for many a century.

All through his last and prolonged illness, from earliest spring until midsummer, he loved to hear how the garden was getting on, and would ask after certain flowers and plants. When the bitter cold spring was over and the warm weather came, he spent most of the day outside, and even recovered so far as to be able to walk once into the lower garden and visit his favourite flowers. These children of his old age helped to cheer him to the last.

APPENDIX 1.

As for this unfinished work, suggestive outlines left for others to fill in, Professor Howes writes to me in October 1899:--

Concerning the papers at South Kensington, which, as part of the contents of your father's book-shelves, were given by him to the College, and now are arranged, numbered, and registered in order for use, there is evidence that in 1858 he, with his needles and eyegla.s.s, had dissected and carefully figured the so-called p.r.o.nephros of the Frog's tadpole, in a manner which as to accuracy of detail antic.i.p.ated later discovery. Again, in the early '80's, he had observed and recorded in a drawing the prae-pulmonary aortic arch of the Amphibian, at a period antedating the researches of Boas, which in connection with its discovery placed the whole subject of the morphology of the pulmonary artery of the vertebrata on its final basis, and brought harmony into our ideas concerning it.

Both these subjects lie at the root of modern advances in vertebrate morphology.

Concerning the skull, he was in the '80's back to it with a will. His line of attack was through the lampreys and hags and the higher cartilaginous fishes, and he was following up a revolutionary conception (already hinted at in his Hunterian Lectures in 1864, and later in a Royal Society paper on Amphioxus in 1875), that the trabeculae cranii, judged by their relationships to the nerves, may represent a pair of prae-oral visceral arches. In his unpublished notes there is evidence that he was bringing to the support of this conclusion the discovery of a supposed 4th branch to the trigeminal nerve--the relationships of this (which he proposed to term the "hyporhinal" or palato-nasal division) and the ophthalmic (to have been termed the "orbitonasal" (A term already applied by him in 1875 to the corresponding nerve in the Batrachia. ("Encyclopaedia Britannica" 9th edition, volume 1 article "Amphibia."))) to the trabecular arch and a supposed prae-mandibular visceral cleft, being regarded as repet.i.tional of those of the maxillary and mandibular divisions to the mandibular cleft. So far as I am aware, von Kupffer is the only observer who has given this startling conclusion support, in his famous "Studien" (Hf.

I. Kopf Acipenser, Munchen, 1893), and from the nature of other recent work on the genesis of parts of the cranium hitherto thought to be wholly trabecular in origin, it might well be further upheld. As for the discovery of the nerve, I have been lately much interested to find that Mr. E. Phelps Allis, junior, an investigator who has done grand work in Cranial Morphology, has recently and independently arrived at a similar result. It was while working in my laboratory in July last that he mentioned the fact to me. Remembering that your father had published the aforementioned hints on the subject, and recalling conversations I had with him, it occurred to me to look into his unpublished ma.n.u.scripts (then being sorted), if perchance he had gone further. And, behold! there is a lengthy attempt to write the matter up in full, in which, among other things, he was seeking to show that, on this basis, the mode of termination of the notochord in the Craniata, and in the Branchiostomidae (in which the trabecular arch is undifferentiated), is readily explained. Mr. Allis's studies are now progressing, and I have arranged with him that if, in the end, his results come sufficiently close to your father's, he shall give his work due recognition and publicity. (See "The Lateral Sensory Ca.n.a.ls, the Eye-Muscles, and the Peripheral Distribution of certain of the Cranial Nerves of Mustelus laevis" by Edward Phelps Allis, junior, reprinted from "Quarterly Journal Micr. S." volume 45 part 2 New Series.)

Among his schemes of the early '80's, there was actually commenced a work on the principles of Mammalian Anatomy and an Elementary Treatise on the Vertebrata. The former exists in the shape of a number of drawings with very brief notes, the latter to a slight extent only in ma.n.u.script. In the former, intended for the medical student and as a means of familiarising him with the anatomical "tree" as distinct from its surgical "leaves," your father once again returned to the skull, and he leaves a scheme for a revised terminology of its nerve exits worthy his best and most clear-headed endeavours of the past.

(Concerning this he wrote to Professor Howes in 1890 when giving him permission to denote two papers which he was about to present to the Zoological Society, as the first which emanated from the Huxley Research Laboratory]:--"Pray do as you think best about the nomenclature. I remember when I began to work at the skull it seemed a hopeless problem, and years elapsed before I got hold of the clue."

[And six weeks later, he writes]:--"You are always welcome to turn anything of mine to account, though I vow I do not just now recollect anything about the terms you mention. If you were to examine me in my own papers, I believe I should be plucked.") [And well do I remember how, in the '80's, both in the cla.s.s-room and in conversation, he would emphasise the fact that the hypoglossus nerve roots of the mammal arise serially with the ventral roots of the spinal nerves, little thinking that the discovery by Froriep, in 1886, of their dorsal ganglionated counterparts, would establish the actual h.o.m.ology between the two, and by leading to the conclusion that though actual vertebrae do not contribute to the formation of the mammalian skull, its occipital region is of truncal origin, mark the most revolutionary advance in cranial morphology since his own of 1856.

Much of the final zoological work of his life lay with the Bony Fishes, and he leaves unfinished (indeed only just commenced) a memoir embodying a new scheme of cla.s.sification of these, which shows that he was intending to do for them what he did for Birds in the most active period of his career. It was my good fortune to have helped as a hodman in the study of these creatures, with a view to a Text-book we were to have written conjointly, and as I realise what he was intending to make out of the dry facts, I am filled with grief at the thought of what we must have lost. His cla.s.sification was based on the labours of years, as testified by a vast acc.u.mulation of rough notes and sketches, and as a conspicuous feature of it there stands the embodiment under one head of all those fishes having the swim-bladder in connection with the auditory organ by means of a chain of ossicles--a revolutionary arrangement, which later, in the hands of the late Dr. Sagemahl, and by his introduction of the famous term--"Ostariophyseae," has done more than all else of recent years to clear the Ichthyological air. Your father had antic.i.p.ated this unpublished, and in a proposal to unite the Herrings and Pikes into a single group, the "Clupesoces," he had further given promise of a new system, based on the study of the structure of the fins, jaws, and reproductive organs of the Bony Fishes, the cla.s.sifications of which are still largely chaotic, which would have been as revolutionary as it was rational. New terms both in taxonomy and anatomy were contemplated, and in part framed. His published terms "Elasmo-" and "Cysto-arian" are the adjective form of two--far-reaching and significant--which give an idea of what was to have come. Similarly, the spinose fin-rays were to have been termed "acanthonemes," the branching and multiarticulate "arthronemes," and those of the more elementary and "adipose fin" type "protonemes": and had he lived to complete the task, I question whether it would not have excelled his earlier achievements.

The Rabbit was to have been the subject of the first of the aforementioned books, and in the desire to get at the full meaning of problems which arose during its progress, he was led to digress into a general anatomical survey of the Rodentia, and in testimony to this there remain five or six books of rough notes bearing dates 1880 to 1884, and a series of finished pencil-drawings, which, as works of art and accurate delineations of fact, are among the most finished productions of his hand. In the same manner his contemplated work upon the Vertebrata led him during 1879-1880 to renewed investigation of the anatomy of some of the more aberrant orders. Especially as concerning the Marsupialia and Edentata was this the case, and to the end in view he secured living specimens of the Vulpine Phalanger, and purchased of the Zoological Society the Sloths and Ant-eaters which during that period died in their Gardens. These he carefully dissected, and he leaves among his papers a series of incomplete notes (fullest as concerning the Phalanger and Cape Anteater [Orycteropus] ([I was privileged to a.s.sist in the dissection of the latter animal, and well do I remember how, when by means of a blow-pipe he had inflated the bladder, intent on determining its limit of distensibility, the organ burst, with unpleasant results, which called forth the remark] "I think we'll leave it at that!")), which were never finished up.

They prove that he intended the production of special monographs on the anatomy of these peculiar mammalian forms, as he did on members of other orders which he had less fully investigated, and on the more important groups of fishes alluded to in the earlier part of my letter; and there seems no doubt, from the collocation of dates and study of the order of the events, that his memorable paper "On the Application of the Laws of Evolution to the arrangement of the Vertebrata, and more particularly of the Mammalia," published in the "Proceedings of the Zoological Society" for 1880,--the most masterly among his scientific theses--was the direct outcome of this intention, the only expression which he gave to the world of the interaction of a series of revolutionary ideas and conceptions (begotten of the labours of his closing years as a working zoologist) which were at the period a.s.suming shape in his mind. They have done more than all else of their period to rationalise the application of our knowledge of the Vertebrata, and have now left their mark for all time on the history of progress, as embodied in our cla.s.sificatory systems.

He was in 1882 extending his important observations upon the respiratory apparatus from birds to reptiles, with results which show him to have been keenly appreciative of the existence of fundamental points of similarity between the Avian and Chelonian types--a field which has been more recently independently opened up by Milani.

Nor must it be imagined that after the publication of his ideal work on the Crayfishes in 1880, he had forsaken the Invertebrata. On the contrary, during the late '70's, and on till 1882, he acc.u.mulated a considerable number of drawings (as usual with brief notes), on the Mollusca. Some are rough, others beautiful in every respect, and among the more conspicuous outcomes of the work are some detailed observations on the nervous system, and an attempt to formulate a new terminology of orientation of the Acephalous Molluscan body. The period embraces that of his research upon the Spirula of the "Challenger"

expedition, since published; and incidentally to this he also acc.u.mulated a series of valuable drawings, with explanatory notes, of Cephalopod anatomy, which, as accurate records of fact, are unsurpa.s.sed.

As you are aware, he was practically the founder of the Anthropological Inst.i.tute. Here again, in the late '60's and early '70's, he was most clearly contemplating a far-reaching inquiry into the physical anthropology of all races of mankind. There remain in testimony to this some 400 to 500 photographs (which I have had carefully arranged in order and registered), most of them of the nude figure standing erect, with the arm extended against a scale. A desultory correspondence proves that in connection with these he was in treaty with British residents and agents all over the world, with the Admiralty and naval officers, and that all was being done with a fixed idea in view. He was clearly contemplating something exhaustive and definite which he never fulfilled, and the method is now the more interesting from its being essentially the same as that recently and independently adopted by Mortillet.

Beyond this, your father's notes reveal numerous other indications of matters and phases of activity, of great interest in their bearings on the history and progress of contemporary investigation, but these are of a detailed and wholly technical order.

APPENDIX 2.

His administrative work as an officer of the Royal Society is described in the following note by Sir Joseph Hooker:--

Mr. Huxley was appointed Joint-Secretary of the Royal Society, November 30, 1871, in succession to Dr. Sharpey, Sir George Airy being President, and Professor (now Sir George) Stokes, Senior Secretary. He held the office till November 30, 1880. The duties of the office are manifold and heavy; they include attendance at all the meetings of the Fellows, and of the councils, committees, and sub-committees of the Society, and especially the supervision of the printing and ill.u.s.trating all papers on biological subjects that are published in the Society's Transactions and Proceedings: the latter often involving a protracted correspondence with the authors. To this must be added a share in the supervision of the staff of officers, of the library and correspondence, and the details of house-keeping.

The appointment was well-timed in the interest of the Society, for the experience he had obtained as an officer in the Surveying Expedition of Captain Stanley rendered his co-operation and advice of the greatest value in the efforts which the Society had recently commenced to induce the Government, through the Admiralty especially, to undertake the physical and biological exploration of the ocean. It was but a few months before his appointment that he had been placed upon a committee of the Society, through which H.M.S. "Porcupine" was employed for this purpose in the European seas, and negotiations had already been commenced with the Admiralty for a voyage of circ.u.mnavigation with the same objects, which eventuated in the "Challenger" Expedition.

In the first year of his appointment, the equipment of the "Challenger", and selection of its officers, was entrusted to the Royal Society, and in the preparation of the instructions to the naturalists Mr. Huxley had a dominating responsibility. In the same year a correspondence commenced with the India Office on the subject of deep-sea dredging in the Indian Ocean (it came to nothing), and another with the Royal Geographical Society on that of a North Polar Expedition, which resulted in the Nares Expedition (1875). In 1873, another with the Admiralty on the advisability of appointing naturalists to accompany two of the expeditions about to be despatched for observing the transit of Venus across the sun's disk in Mauritius and Kerguelen, which resulted in three naturalists being appointed.

Arduous as was the correspondence devolving on the Biological Secretary, through the instructing and instalment of these two expeditions, it was as nothing compared with the official, demi-official, and private, with the Government and individuals, that arose from the Government request that the Royal Society should arrange for the publication and distribution of the enormous collections brought home by the above-named expedition. It is not too much to say that Mr. Huxley had a voice in every detail of these publications. The sittings of the Committee of Publication of the "Challenger" Expedition collections (of which Sir J.D. Hooker was chairman, and Mr. Huxley the most active member) were protracted from 1876 to 1895, and resulted in the publication of fifty royal quarto volumes, with plates, maps, sections, etc., the work of seventy-six authors, every shilling of the expenditure on which (some 50,000 pounds) was pa.s.sed under the authority of the Committee of Publication.

Nor was Mr. Huxley less actively interested in the domestic affairs of the Society. In 1873 the whole establishment was translated from the building subsequently occupied by the Royal Academy to that which it now inhabits in the same quadrangle; a flitting of library stuff and appurtenances involving great responsibilities on the officers for the satisfactory re-establishment of the whole inst.i.tution. In 1874 a very important alteration of the bye-laws was effected, whereby that which gave to Peers the privilege of being proposed for election as Fellows, without previous selection by the Committee (and to which bye-laws, as may be supposed, Mr. Huxley was especially repugnant), was replaced by one restricting that privilege to Privy Councillors. In 1875 he actively supported a proposition for extending the interests taken in the Society by holding annually a reception, to which the lady friends of the Fellows who were interested in science should be invited to inspect an exhibition of some of the more recent inventions, appliances, and discoveries in science. And in the same year another reform took place in which he was no less interested, which was the abolition of the entrance fees for ordinary Fellows, which had proved a bar to the coming forward of men of small incomes, but great eminence.

The loss of income to the Society from this was met by a subscription of no less than 10,666 pounds, raised almost entirely amongst the Fellows themselves for the purpose.

In 1876 a responsibility, that fell heavily on the Secretaries, was the allotment annually of a grant by the Treasury of 4000 pounds, to be expended, under the direction of the Royal and other learned societies, on the advancement of science. (It is often called a grant to the Royal Society. This is an error. The Royal Society, as such, in no way partic.i.p.ates in this grant. The Society makes grants from funds in its own possession only.) Every detail of the business of this grant is undertaken by a large committee of the Royal and other scientific societies, which meets in the Society's rooms, and where all the business connected with the grant is conducted and the records kept.

APPENDIX 3.

LIST OF ESSAYS, BOOKS, AND SCIENTIFIC MEMOIRS, BY T.H. HUXLEY.

ESSAYS.

"The Darwinian Hypothesis." ("Times" December 26, 1859.) "Collected Essays" 2.

"On the Educational Value of the Natural History Sciences." (An Address delivered at St. Martin's Hall, on July 22, 1854, and published as a pamphlet in that year.) "Lay Sermons"; "Collected Essays" 3.

"Time and Life." ("Macmillan's Magazine" December 1859.)

"The Origin of Species." (The "Westminster Review" April 1860.) "Lay Sermons"; "Collected Essays" 2.

"A Lobster: or the Study of Zoology." (A Lecture delivered at the South Kensington Museum in 1861, and subsequently published by the Department of Science and Art. Original t.i.tle, "On the Study of Zoology.") "Lay Sermons"; "Collected Essays" 8.

"Geological Contemporaneity and Persistent Types of Life." (The Anniversary Address to the Geological Society for 1862.) "Lay Sermons"; "Collected Essays" 8.

"Six Lectures to Working Men on Our Knowledge of the Causes of the Phenomena of Organic Nature, 1863." "Collected Essays" 2.