Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume II Part 9

[As for the teaching by "types," which was the most salient feature of his method, and therefore the most easily applied and misapplied, Professor Parker continues:--

Huxley's method of teaching was based upon the personal examination by the student of certain "types" of animals and plants selected with a view of ill.u.s.trating the various groups. But, in his lectures, these types were not treated as the isolated things they necessarily appear in a laboratory manual or an examination syllabus; each, on the contrary, took its proper place as an example of a particular grade of structure, and no student of ordinary intelligence could fail to see that the types were valuable, not for themselves, but simply as marking, so to speak, the chapters of a connected narrative. Moreover, in addition to the types, a good deal of work of a more general character was done. Thus, while we owe to Huxley more than to any one else the modern system of teaching biology, he is by no means responsible for the somewhat arid and mechanical aspect it has a.s.sumed in certain quarters.

The application of the same system to botanical teaching was inaugurated in 1873, when, being compelled to go abroad for his health, he arranged that Mr. (now Sir W.) Thiselton Dyer should take his place and lecture on Botany.

The "Elementary Instruction in Biology," published in 1875, was a text-book based upon this system. This book, in writing which Huxley was a.s.sisted by his demonstrator, H.N. Martin, was reprinted thirteen times before 1888, when it was "Revised and Extended by Howes and Scott," his later a.s.sistants. The revised edition is marked by one radical change, due to the insistence of his demonstrator, the late Professor Jeffery Parker. In the first edition, the lower forms of life were first dealt with; from simple cells--amoeba, yeast-plant, blood-corpuscle--the student was taken through an ascending series of plants and of animals, ending with the frog or rabbit. But] "the experience of the Lecture-room and the Laboratory taught me," [writes Huxley in the new preface,] "that philosophical as it might be in theory, it had defects in practice." [The process might be regarded as not following the scientific rule of proceeding from the known to the unknown; while the small and simple organisms required a skill in handling high-power microscopes which was difficult for beginners to acquire. Hence the course was reversed, and began with the more familiar type of the rabbit or frog. This was Rolleston's practice; but it may be noted that Professor Ray Lankester has always maintained and further developed "the original Huxleian plan of beginning with the same microscopic forms" as being a most important philosophic improvement on Rolleston's plan, and giving, he considers, "the truer 'twist,' as it were, to a student's mind."

When the book was sent to Darwin, he wrote back (November 12, 1875):--

My dear Huxley,

Many thanks for your biology, which I have read. It was a real stroke of genius to think of such a plan. Lord, how I wish that I had gone through such a course.

Ever yours,

Charles Darwin.

A large portion of his time and energy was occupied in the organisation of this course of teaching for teachers, and its elaboration before being launched on a larger scale in October, when the Biological Department of the Jermyn Street school was transferred to the new buildings at South Kensington, fitted with laboratories which were to excite his friend Dr. Dohrn's envy. But he was also at work upon his share of the "Science Primers," so far as his still uncertain health allowed. This and the affairs of the British a.s.sociation are the subject of several letters to Sir Henry Roscoe and Dr. Tyndall.]

26 Abbey Place, April 8, 1872.

My dear Roscoe,

Many thanks for your kind letter of welcome. My long rest has completely restored me. As my doctor told me, I was sound, wind and limb, and had merely worn myself out. I am not going to do that again, and you see that I have got rid of the School Board. It was an awful incubus!

Oddly enough I met the Ashtons in the Vatican, and heard about your perplexities touching Oxford. I should have advised you to do as you have done. I think that you have a great piece of work to do at Owens College, and that you will do it. If you had gone to Oxford you would have sacrificed all the momentum you have gained in Manchester; and would have had to begin de novo, among conditions which, I imagine, it is very hard for a non-University man to appreciate and adjust himself to.

I like the look of the "Primers" (of which Macmillan has sent me copies to-day) very much, and shall buckle to at mine as soon as possible. I am very glad you did not wait for me. I remained in a very shaky condition up to the middle of March, and could do nothing.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

The wife unites with me in kind regards to Mrs. Roscoe and yourself.

Morthoe, Ilfracombe, North Devon, September 9, 1872.

My dear Tyndall,

I was very glad to have news of you, and to hear that you are vigorous.

My outing hitherto has not been very successful, so far as the inward man is concerned at least, for the weather has been good enough. But I have been worried to death with dyspepsia and the hyperchondriacal bedevilments that follow in its train, until I am seriously thinking of returning to town to see if the fine air of St. John's Wood (as the man says in "Punch") won't enable me to recover from the effects of the country.

I wish I were going with you to Yankee Land, not to do any lecturing, G.o.d forbid! but to be a quiet spectator in a corner of the enthusiastic audiences. I am as lazy as a dog, and the role of looker-on would just suit me. However, I have a good piece of work to do in organising my new work at South Kensington.

I have just asked my children what message they have to send to you, and they send their love; very sorry they won't see you before you go, and hope you won't come back speaking through your nose!

I shall be in town this week or next, and therefore shall see you.

Ever yours faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

26 Abbey Place, September 17, 1872.

My dear Roscoe,

Your letter has followed me from Morthoe here. We had good enough weather in Devon--but my stay there was marred by the continuous dyspepsia and concurrent hyperchondriacal incapacity. At last, I could not stand it any longer, and came home for "change of air," leaving the wife and chicks to follow next week. By dint of living on cocoa and Revalenta, and giving up drink, tobacco, and all other things that make existence pleasant, I am getting better.

What was your motive in getting kicked by a horse? I stopped away from the a.s.sociation without that; and am not sorry to have been out of the way of the X. business. What is to become of the a.s.sociation if -- is to monopolise it? And then there was that scoundrel, Louis Napoleon--to whom no honest man ought to speak--gracing the scene. I am right glad I was out of it.

I am at my wits' end to suggest a lecturer for you. I wish I could offer myself, but I have refused everything of that sort on the score of health; and moreover, I am afraid of my wife!

What do you say to Ramsay? He lectures very well. I have done nothing whatever to the Primer. Stewart sent me Geikie's letter this morning, and I have asked Macmillan to send Geikie the proofs of my Primer so far as they go. We must not overlap more than can be helped.

I have not seen Hooker yet since my return. While all this row has been going on, I could not ask him to do anything for us. And until X.

is dead and d--d (officially at any rate), I am afraid there will be little peace for him.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

Please remember me very kindly to Mrs. Roscoe.

[In a letter of September 25 is a reference to the way in which his increasing family had outgrown his house in Abbey Place. Early in the preceding year, he had come to the decision to buy a small house in the same neighbourhood, and add to it so as to give elbow-room to each and all of the family. This was against the advice of his friend and legal adviser, to whom he wrote announcing his decision, as follows.

The letter was adorned with a sketch of an absurd cottage, "Ye House!"

perched like a windmill on a kind of pedestal, and with members of the family painfully ascending a ladder to the upper story, above the ominous legend, "Staircase forgotten."]

March 20, 1871.

My dear Burton,

There is something delightfully refreshing in rushing into a piece of practical work in the teeth of one's legal adviser.

If the lease of a piece of ground whereon I am going to build mine house come to you, will you see if it's all right.

Yours wilfully,

T.H. Huxley.

[This house, Number 4 Marlborough Place, stands on the north side of that quiet street, close to its junction with Abbey Road. It is next door to the Presbyterian Church, on the other side of which again is a Jewish synagogue. The irregular front of the house, with the original cottage, white-painted and deep eaved, joined by a big porch to the new uncompromising square face of yellow brick, distinguished only by its extremely large windows, was screened from the road by a high oak paling, and a well-grown row of young lime-trees. Taken as a whole, it was not without character, and certainly was unlike most London houses. It was built for comfort, not beauty; designed, within stringent limits as to cost, to give each member of the family room to get away by himself or herself if so disposed. Moreover, the gain in s.p.a.ce made it more possible to see something of friends or put up a guest, than in the small and crowded house in Abbey Place.

A small garden lay in front of the house; a considerably larger garden behind, wherein the chief ornament was then a large apple-tree, that never failed to spread a cloud of blossom for my father's birthday, the 4th of May.

Over the way, too, for many years we were faced by a long garden full of blossoming pear-trees in which thrushes and blackbirds sang and nested, belonging to a desolate house in the Abbey Road, which was tenanted by a solitary old man, supposed to be a male prototype of Miss Havisham in "Great Expectations."

The move was accompanied by a unique and unpleasant experience. A knavish fellow, living in a cottage close to the foot of the garden, sought to blackmail the new comer, under threat of legal proceedings, alleging that a catchment well for surface drainage had made his bas.e.m.e.nt damp. Unfortunately for his case, it could be shown that the pipes had not yet been connected with the well, and when he carried out his threat, he gained nothing from his suit in Chancery and his subsequent appeal, except some stinging remarks from Vice-Chancellor Malins.]

I am afraid the brute is impecunious [wrote my father after the first suit failed], and that I shall get nothing out of him. So I shall have had three months' worry, and be fined 100 pounds sterling or so for being wholly and absolutely in the right.