Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume I Part 34

T.H. Huxley.

[In 1862, in addition to all the work connected with the species question already detailed, Huxley published three paleontological papers ("On the new Labyrinthodonts from the coal-field of Edinburgh"; "On a Stalk-eyed Crustacean from the coal-fields of Paisley"; and "On the Teeth of Diprotodon."), while the paper on the "Anatomy and Development of Pyrosoma," first read on December 1, 1859, was now published in the "Proceedings of the Linnean Society."

In the list of work in hand are four paleontological papers, besides the slowly progressing "Manual of Comparative Anatomy." ("On Indian Fossils," on "Cephalaspis and Pteraspis," on "Stagonolepis," and a "Memoir descriptive of Labyrinthodont remains from the Trias and Coal of Britain," which he first treated of in 1858, "clearly establishing for the first time the vertebrate nature of these remains."--Sir M. Foster, Obituary Notice "Proceedings of the Royal Society" 59 55.)

When he went north to deliver his lectures at Edinburgh "On the relation of Man to the Lower Animals," he took the opportunity of examining fossils at Forfar, and lectured also at Glasgow; while at Easter he went to Ireland; on March 15 he was at Dublin, lecturing there on the 25th.

Reference has already been made (in the letter to C. Darwin of May 6, 1862) to the unsatisfactory state of Huxley's health. He was further crippled by neuralgic rheumatism in his arm and shoulder, and to get rid of this, went on July 1 to Switzerland for a month's holiday. Reaching Grindelwald on the 4th, he was joined on the 6th by Dr. Tyndall, and with him rambled on the glacier and made an expedition to the Faulhorn.

On the 13th they went to the Rhone glacier, meeting Sir J. Lubbock on their way, at the other side of the Grimsel. Both here and at the Eggischhorn, where they went a few days later, Huxley confined himself to easy expeditions, or, as his notebook has it, stayed "quiet" or "idle," while the hale pair ascended the Galenstock and the Jungfrau.

By July 28 he was home again in time for an examiners' meeting at the London University the next day, and a viva voce in physiology on the 4th August, before going to Scotland to serve on the Fishery Commission.

This was the first of the numerous commissions on which he served. With his colleagues, Dr. Lyon Playfair (afterwards Lord Playfair) and Colonel Maxwell, he was busy from August 8 to September 16, chiefly on the west coast, taking evidence from the trawlers and their opponents, and making direct investigations into the habits of the herring.

The following letter to Mr. (afterwards Sir W.H.) Flower, then Curator of the Royal College of Surgeons' Museum, refers to this trip and to his appointment to the examinership in physiology at the College of Surgeons, for which he had applied in May and which he held until 1870.

Mr. Flower, indeed, was deeply interested at this time in the same problems as Huxley, and helped his investigations for "Man's Place" by making a number of dissections to test the disputed relations between the brain of man and of the apes.]

Hotel de la Jungfrau, Aeggischhorn, July 18, 1862.

My dear Flower,

Many thanks for your letter. I shall make my acknowledgments to the council in due form when I have read the official announcement on my return to England. I trust they will not have occasion to repent declining Dr. --'s offer. At any rate I shall do my best.

I am particularly obliged to you for telling me about the Dijon bones.

Dijon lies quite in my way in returning to England, and I shall stop a day there for the purpose of making the acquaintance of M. Nodet and his Schizopleuron. I have a sort of dim recollection that there are some other remains of extinct South American mammals in the Dijon Museum which I ought to see.

Your news about the lower jaw made me burst out into such an exclamation that all the salle-a-manger heard me! I saw the fitness of the thing at once. The foramen and the shape of the condyle ought to have suggested it at once.

I have had a very pleasant trip, pa.s.sing through Grindelwald, the Aar valley, and the Rhone valley, as far as here; but, up to the day before yesterday, my health remained very unsatisfactory, and I was terribly teased by the neuralgia or rheumatism or whatever it is.

On that day, however, I had a very sharp climb involving a great deal of exertion and a most prodigious sweating, and on the next morning I really woke up a new man. Yesterday I repeated the dose and I am in hopes now that I shall come back fit to grapple with all the work that lies before me.

Ever, my dear Flower, yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

[This autumn he gladly took on what appeared to be an additional piece of work. On October 12 he writes from 26 Abbey Place:--]

I saw Flower yesterday, and I find that my present colleague in the Hunterian Professorship wishes to get rid of his share in the lectures, having, I suppose, at the eleventh hour discovered his incompetency. It looks paradoxical to say so, but it will really be easier for me to give eighteen or twenty-four lectures than twelve, so that I have professed my readiness to take as much as he likes off his hands.

[This Professorship had been in existence for more than sixty years, for when the Museum of the famous anatomist John Hunter was entrusted to the College of Surgeons by the Government, the condition was made that "one course of lectures, not less than twenty-four in number, on comparative anatomy and other subjects, ill.u.s.trated by the preparations, shall be given every year by some member of the company." Huxley arranged to publish from year to year the substance of his lectures on the vertebrates, "and by that process to bring out eventually a comprehensive, though condensed, systematic work on 'Comparative Anatomy'." ("Comparative Anatomy" volume 1 Preface.)

Of the labour entailed in this course, the late Sir W.H. Flower wrote:--

When, in 1862, he was appointed to the Hunterian Professorship at the College of Surgeons, he took for the subject of several yearly courses of lectures the anatomy of the vertebrata, beginning with the primates, and as the subject was then rather new to him, and as it was a rule with him never to make a statement in a lecture which was not founded upon his own actual observation, he set to work to make a series of original dissections of all the forms he treated of. These were carried on in the workroom at the top of the college, and mostly in the evenings, after his daily occupation at Jermyn Street (the School of Mines, as it was then called) was over, an arrangement which my residence in the college buildings enabled me to make for him. These rooms contained a large store of material, entire or partially dissected animals preserved in spirit, which, unlike those mounted in the museum, were available for further investigation in any direction, and these, supplemented occasionally by fresh subjects from the Zoological Gardens, formed the foundation of the lectures...On these evenings it was always my privilege to be with him, and to a.s.sist in the work in which he was engaged. In dissecting, as in everything else, he was a very rapid worker, going straight to the point he wished to ascertain with a firm and steady hand, never diverted into side issues, nor wasting any time in unnecessary polishing up for the sake of appearances; the very opposite, in fact, to what is commonly known as "finikin." His great facility for bold and dashing sketching came in most usefully in this work, the notes he made being largely helped out with ill.u.s.trations.

The following is the letter in which he makes himself known to Professor Haeckel of Jena, who, in his thanks for the specimens, bewails the lot of "us poor inland Germans, who have to get help from England."]

The Royal School of Mines, Jermyn Street, October 28, 1862.

Sir,

A copy of your exceedingly valuable and beautiful monograph, "Die Radiolarien," came into my hands two or three days ago, and I have been devoting the little leisure I possess just at present to a careful study of its contents, which are to me profoundly interesting and instructive.

Permit me to say this much by way of introduction to a request which I have to prefer, which is, that you will be good enough to let me have a copy of your Habitationsschrift, "De Rhizopodum Finibus," if you have one to spare. If it is sent through Frommans of Jena to the care of Messrs. Williams and Norgate, London, it will reach me safely.

I observe that in your preface you state that you have no specimen of the famous Barbadoes deposit. As I happen to possess some from Schomburgk's own collection, I should be ashamed to allow you any longer to suffer from that want, and I beg your acceptance of the inclosed little packet. If this is not sufficient, pray let me know and I will send you as much more.

If you desire it, I can also send you some of the Oran earth, and as much as you like of the Atlantic deep-sea soundings, which are almost entirely made up of Globigerina and Polycistina.

I am, Sir, yours very faithfully,

Thomas H. Huxley.

[The next letter refers to the scientific examinations at the University of London.]

December 4, 1862.

My dear Hooker,

I look upon you as art and part of the "Natural History Review," though not ostensibly one of the gang, so I bid you to a feast, partly of reason and partly of mutton, at my house on December 11 (being this day week) at half-past six. Do come if you can, for we have not seen your ugly old phiz for ages, and should be comforted by an inspection thereof, however brief.

I did my best yesterday to get separate exhibitions for Chemistry, Botany, and Zoological Biology, at the committee yesterday [At the London University.], and I suspect from your letter that if you had been there you would have backed me. However, it is clear that they only mean to give separate exhibits for Chemistry and Biology as a whole.

Because Botany and Zoology are, philosophically speaking, cognate subjects, people are under the delusion that it is easier to work both up at the same time, than it would be to work up, say, Chemistry and Botany. Just fancy asking a young man who has heaps of other things to work up for the B.Sc., to qualify himself for honours both in botany, histological, systematic, and physiological. That is to say, to get a PRACTICAL KNOWLEDGE of both these groups of subjects.

I really think the botanical and zoological examiners ought to memorialise the senate jointly on the subject. The present system leads to mere sham and cram.

Ever yours,

T.H. Huxley.

[The year 1863, notable for the publication of Huxley's first book, found him plunged deep in an immense quant.i.ty of work of all sorts. He was still examiner in Physiology and Comparative Anatomy at the London University, a post he held from 1855 to 1863, and again from 1865 to 1870, "making," as Sir Michael Foster says, "even an examination feel the influence of the new spirit in biology; and among his examinees at that time there was one at least who, knowing Huxley by his writings, but by his writings only, looked forward to the viva voce test, not as a trial, but as an occasion of delight."

In addition to the work mentioned in the following letters, I note three lectures at Hull on April 6, 8, and 10; a paper on "Craniology" (January 17), and his "Letter on the Human Remains in the Sh.e.l.l Mounds," in the "Ethnological Society's Transactions," while the Fishery Commission claimed much of his time, either at the Board of Trade, or travelling over the north, east, and south coasts from the end of July to the beginning of October, and again in November and December.]

Jermyn Street, April 30, 1863.

My dear Kingsley,

I am exceedingly pleased to have your good word about the lectures,--and I think I shall thereby be encouraged to do what a great many people have wished--that is, to bring out an enlarged and revised edition of them.

The only difficulty is time--if one could but work five-and-twenty hours a day!

With respect to the sterility question, I do not think there is much doubt as to the effect of breeding in and in in destroying fertility.

But the sterility which must be obtained by the selective breeder in order to convert his morphological species into physiological species--such as we have in nature--must be quite irrespective of breeding in and in.

There is no question of breeding in and in between a horse and an a.s.s, and yet their produce is usually a sterile hybrid.