Playfair seems rather disgusted at our pronunciamento against the bill, and he declares that both Sanderson and Sharpey assented to it. What they were dreaming about I cannot imagine. To say that no man shall experiment except for purpose of original discovery is about as reasonable as to ordain that no man shall swim unless he means to go from Dover to Calais.
However the Commission is to be issued, and it is everything to gain time and let the present madness subside a little. I vowed I would never be a member of another Commission if I could help it, but I suppose I shall have to serve on this.
I am very busy with my lectures, and am nearly half through. I shall not be sorry when they are over, as I have been grinding away now since last October.
With kindest regards to Mrs. Darwin, ever yours very faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
[He was duly asked to serve on the Commission. Though his lectures in Edinburgh prevented him from attending till the end of July no difficulty was made over this, as the first meetings of the Commission, which began on June 30, were to be devoted to taking the less controversial evidence. In accepting his nomination he wrote to Mr. Cross (afterwards Lord Cross), at that time Home Secretary:—]
If I can be of any service I shall be very glad to act on the Commission, sympathising as I do on the one hand with those who abhor cruelty to animals, and, on the other, with those who abhor the still greater cruelty to man which is involved in any attempt to arrest the progress of physiology and of rational medicine.
[The other members of the Commission were Lords Cardwell and Winmarleigh, Mr. W.E. Forster, Sir J.B. Karslake, Professor Erichssen, and Mr. R.H. Hutton.
The evidence given before the Commission bore out the view that English physiologists inflicted no more pain upon animals than could be avoided; but one witness, not an Englishman, and not having at that time a perfect command of the English language, made statements which appeared to the Commission at least to indicate that the witness was indifferent to animal suffering. Of this incident Huxley writes to Mr. Darwin at the same time as he forwarded a formal invitation for him to appear as a witness before the Commission:—]
4 Marlborough Place, October 30, 1875.
My dear Darwin,
The inclosed tells its own story. I have done my best to prevent your being bothered, but for various reasons which will occur to you I did not like to appear too obstructive, and I was asked to write to you. The strong feeling of my colleagues (and my own I must say also) is that we ought to have your opinions in our minutes. At the same time there is a no less strong desire to trouble you as little as possible, and under no circumstances to cause you any risk of injury to health.
What with occupation of time, worry and vexation, this horrid Commission is playing the deuce with me. I have felt it my duty to act as counsel for Science, and was well satisfied with the way things were going. But on Thursday when I was absent at the Council of the Royal Society — was examined, and if what I hear is a correct account of the evidence he gave I may as well throw up my brief.
I am told that he openly professed the most entire indifference to animal suffering, and said he only gave anaesthetics to keep animals quiet!
I declare to you I did not believe the man lived who was such an unmitigated cynical brute as to profess and act upon such principles, and I would willingly agree to any law which would send him to the treadmill.
The impression his evidence made on Cardwell and Forster is profound, and I am powerless (even if I had the desire which I have not) to combat it. He has done more mischief than all the fanatics put together.
I am utterly disgusted with the whole business.
Ever yours,
T.H. Huxley.
Of course keep the little article on Species. It is in some American Encyclopaedia published by Appleton. And best thanks for your book. I shall study it some day, and value it as I do every line you have written. Don't mention what I have told you outside the circle of discreet Darwindom.
4 Marlborough Place, November 2, 1875.
My dear Darwin,
Our secretary has telegraphed to you to Down, and written to Queen
Anne Street.
But to make sure, I send this note to say that we expect you at 13 Delahay Street [Where the Commission was sitting.] at 2 o'clock to-morrow. And that I have looked out the highest chair that was to be got for you. [Mr. Darwin was long in the leg. When he came to our house the biggest hassock was always placed in an arm-chair to give it the requisite height for him.]
Ever yours very faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
[The Commission reported early in 1876, and a few months after Lord Carnarvon introduced a bill intituled "An Act to amend the law relating to Cruelty to Animals." It was a more drastic measure than was demanded. As a writer in "Nature" (1876 page 248) puts it: "The evidence on the strength of which legislation was recommended went beyond the facts, the report went beyond the evidence, the recommendations beyond the report, and the bill can hardly be said to have gone beyond the recommendations, but rather to have contradicted them."
As to the working of the law, Huxley referred to it the following year in the address, already cited, on "Elementary Instruction in Physiology" ("Collected Essays" 3 310).]
But while I should object to any experimentation which can justly be called painful, and while as a member of a late Royal Commission I did my best to prevent the infliction of needless pain for any purpose, I think it is my duty to take this opportunity of expressing my regret at a condition of the law which permits a boy to troll for pike or set lines with live frog bait for idle amusement, and at the same time lays the teacher of that boy open to the penalty of fine and imprisonment if he uses the same animal for the purpose of exhibiting one of the most beautiful and instructive of physiological spectacles—the circulation in the web of the foot. No one could undertake to affirm that a frog is not inconvenienced by being wrapped up in a wet rag and having his toes tied out, and it cannot be denied that inconvenience is a sort of pain. But you must not inflict the least pain on a vertebrated animal for scientific purposes (though you may do a good deal in that way for gain or for sport) without due licence of the Secretary of State for the Home Department, granted under the authority of the Vivisection Act.
So it comes about that, in this year of grace 1877, two persons may be charged with cruelty to animals. One has impaled a frog, and suffered the creature to writhe about in that condition for hours; the other has pained the animal no more than one of us would be pained by tying strings round his fingers and keeping him in the position of a hydropathic patient. The first offender says, "I did it because I find fishing very amusing," and the magistrate bids him depart in peace—nay, probably wishes him good sport. The second pleads, "I wanted to impress a scientific truth with a distinctness attainable in no other way on the minds of my scholars," and the magistrate fines him five pounds.
I cannot but think that this is an anomalous and not wholly creditable state of things.
CHAPTER 2.7.
1875-1876.
[Huxley only delivered one address outside his regular work in 1875, on "Some Results of the 'Challenger' Expedition," given at the Royal Institution on January 29. For all through the summer he was away from London, engaged upon the summer course of lectures on Natural History at Edinburgh. This was due to the fact that Professor (afterwards Sir) Wyville Thomson was still absent on the "Challenger" expedition, and Professor Victor Carus, who had acted as his substitute before, was no longer available. Under these circumstances the Treasury granted Huxley leave of absence from South Kensington. His course began on May 3, and ended on July 23, and he thought it a considerable feat to deal with the whole Animal Kingdom in 54 lectures. No doubt both he and his students worked at high pressure, especially when the latter came scantily prepared for the task, like the late Joseph Thomson, afterwards distinguished as an African traveller, who has left an account of his experience in this class. Thomson's particular weak point was his Greek, and the terminology of the lectures seems to have been a thorn in his side. This account, which actually tells of the 1876 course, occurs on pages 36 and 37 of his "Life."
The experience of studying personally under Huxley was a privilege to which he had been looking forward with eager anticipation; for he had already been fascinated with the charm of Huxley's writings, and had received from them no small amount of mental stimulus. Nor were his expectations disappointed. But he found the work to be unexpectedly hard, and very soon he had the sense of panting to keep pace with the demands of the lecturer. It was not merely that the texture of scientific reasoning in the lectures was so closely knit,—although that was a very palpable fact,—but the character of Huxley's terminology was entirely strange to him. It met him on his weakest side, for it presupposed a knowledge of Greek (being little else than Greek compounds with English terminations) and of Greek he had none.
Huxley's usual lectures, he writes, are something awful to listen to. One half of the class, which numbers about four hundred, have given up in despair from sheer inability to follow him. The strain on the attention of each lecture is so great as to be equal to any ordinary day's work. I feel quite exhausted after them. And then to master his language is something dreadful. But, with all these drawbacks, I would not miss them, even if they were ten times as difficult. They are something glorious, sublime!
Again he writes:—
Huxley is still very difficult to follow, and I have been four times in his lectures completely stuck and utterly helpless. But he has given us eight or nine beautiful lectures on the frog…If you only heard a few of the lectures you would be surprised to find that there were so few missing links in the chain of life, from the amoeba to the genus homo.
It was a large class, ultimately reaching 353 and breaking the record of the Edinburgh classes without having recourse to the factitious assistance proposed in the letter of May 16.
His inaugural lecture was delivered under what ought to have been rather trying circumstances. On the way from London he stopped a night with his old friends, John Bruce and his wife (one of the Fannings), at their home, Barmoor Castle, near Beal. He had to leave at 6 next morning, reaching Edinburgh at 10, and lecturing at 2.] "Nothing," [he writes,] "could be much worse, but I am going through it with all the cheerfulness of a Christian martyr."
[On May 3 he writes to his wife from the Bruce's Edinburgh house, which they had lent him.]
I know that you will be dying to hear how my lecture went off to-day—so I sit down to send you a line, though you did hear from me to-day.
The theatre was crammed. I am told there were 600 auditors, and I could not have wished for more thorough attention. But I had to lecture in gown and Doctor's hood and the heat was awful. The Principal and the chief professors were present, and altogether it was a state affair. I was in great force, although I did get up at six this morning and travelled all the way from Barmoor. But I won't do that sort of thing again, it's tempting Providence.
May 5.
Fanny and her sisters and the Governess flit to Barmoor to-day and I shall be alone in my glory. I shall be very comfortable and well cared for, so make your mind easy, and if I fall ill I am to send for Clark. He expressly told me to do so as I left him!
I gave my second lecture yesterday to an audience filling the theatre. The reason of this is that everybody who likes—comes for the first week and then only those who have tickets are admitted. How many will become regular students I don't know yet, but there is promise of a big class. The Lord send three extra—to make up for…[(a sudden claim upon his purse before he left home.)
And he writes of this custom to Professor Baynes on June 12:—]
My class is over 350 and I find some good working material among them. Parsons mustered strong in the first week, but I fear they came to curse and didn't remain to pay.
[He was still Lord Rector of Aberdeen University, and on May 10 writes how he attended a business meeting there:—]
I have had my run to Aberdeen and back—got up at 5, started from Edinburgh at 6.25, attended the meeting of the Court at 1. Then drove out with Webster to Edgehill in a great storm of rain and was received with their usual kindness. I did not get back till near 8 o'clock last night and, thanks to "The Virginians" and a good deal of Virginia, I passed the time pleasantly enough…There are 270 tickets gone up to this date, so I suppose I may expect a class of 300 men. 300 x 4 = 1200. Hooray.
To his eldest daughter:—]
Edinburgh, May 16, 1875.
My dearest Jess,
Your mother's letter received this morning reminds me that I have not written to "Cordelia" (I suppose she means Goneril) by a message from that young person—so here is reparation.
I have 330 students, and my class is the biggest in the University—but I am quite cast down and discontented because it is not 351,—being one more than the Botany Class last year—which was never so big before or since.
I am thinking of paying 21 street boys to come and take the extra tickets so that I may crow over all my colleagues.
Fanny Bruce is going to town next week to her grandmother's and I want you girls to make friends with her. It seems to me that she is very nice—but that is only a fallible man's judgment, and Heaven forbid that I should attempt to forestall Miss Cudberry's decision on such a question. Anyhow she has plenty of energy and, among other things, works very hard at German.
M— says that the Roottle-Tootles have a bigger drawing-room than ours. I should be sorry to believe these young beginners guilty of so much presumption, and perhaps you will tell them to have it made smaller before I visit them.
A Scotch gentleman has just been telling me that May is the worst month in the year, here; so pleasant! but the air is soft and warm to-day, and I look out over the foliage to the castle and don't care.
Love to all, and specially M—. Mind you don't tell her that I dine out to-day and to-morrow—positively for the first and last times.
Ever your loving father,
T.H. Huxley.
[However, the class grew without such adventitious aid, and he writes to Mr. Herbert Spencer on June 15:—]
…I have a class of 353, and instruct them in dry facts—particularly warning them to keep free of the infidel speculations which are current under the name of evolution.
I expect an "examiner's call" from a Presbytery before the course is over, but I am afraid that the pay is not enough to induce me to forsake my "larger sphere of influence" in London.
[In the same letter he speaks of a flying visit to town which he was about to make on the following Thursday, returning on the Saturday for lack of a good Sunday train:—]
May hap I may chance to see you at the club—but I shall be torn to pieces with things to do during my two days' stay.
If Moses had not existed I should have had three days in town, which is a curious concatenation of circumstances.
[As for health during this period, it maintained, on the whole, a satisfactory level, thanks to the regime of which he writes to Professor Baynes:—]
I am very sorry to hear that you have been so seriously ill. You will have to take to my way of living—a mutton chop a day and no grog, but much baccy. Don't begin to pick up your threads too fast.
No wonder you are uneasy if you have crabs on your conscience. [I.e. an article for the "Encyclopaedia Britannica."] Thank Heaven they are not on mine!
I am glad to hear you are getting better, and I sincerely trust that you may find all the good you seek in the baths.
As to coming back a "new man," who knows what that might be? Let us rather hope for the old man in a state of complete repair—A1 copper bottomed.
Excuse my nautical language.
[The following letters also touch on his Edinburgh lectures:—]
Cragside, Morpeth, August 11, 1875.
My dear Foster,
We are staying here with Sir W. Armstrong—the whole brood—Miss Matthaei and the majority of the chickens being camped at a farm-house belonging to our host about three miles off. It is wetter than it need be, otherwise we are very jolly.
I finished off my work in Edinburgh on the 23rd and positively polished off the Animal Kingdom in 54 lectures. French without a master in twelve lessons is nothing to this feat. The men worked very well on the whole, and sent in some creditable examination papers. I stayed a few days to finish up the abstracts of my lectures for the "Medical Times"; then picked up the two elder girls who were at Barmoor and brought them on here to join the wife and the rest.
How is it that Dohrn has been and gone? I have been meditating a letter to him for an age. He wanted to see me, and I did not know how to manage to bring about a meeting.
Edinburgh is greatly exercised in its mind about the vivisection business and "Vagus" "swells wisibly" whenever the subject is mentioned. I think there is an inclination to regard those who are ready to consent to legislation of any kind as traitors, or at any rate, trimmers. It sickens me to reflect on the quantity of time and worry I shall have to give to that subject when I get back.
I see that — has been blowing the trumpet at the Medical Association.
He has about as much tact as a flyblown bull.
I have just had a long letter from Wyville Thomson. The "Challenger" inclines to think that Bathybius is a mineral precipitate! in which case some enemy will probably say that it is a product of my precipitation. So mind, I was the first to make that "goak." Old Ehrenberg suggested something of the kind to me, but I have not his letter here. I shall eat my leek handsomely, if any eating has to be done. They have found pseudopodia in Globerigina.
With all good wishes from ours to yours.
Ever yours faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
Cragside, Morpeth, August 13, 1875.
My dear Tyndall,
I find that in the midst of my work in Edinburgh I omitted to write to De Vrij, so I have just sent him a letter expressing my pleasure in being able to co-operate in any plan for doing honour to old Benedict [Spinoza, a memorial to whom was being raised in Holland.], for whom I have a most especial respect.
I am not sure that I won't write something about him to stir up the
Philistines.
My work at Edinburgh got itself done very satisfactorily, and I cleared about 1000 pounds by the transaction, being one of the few examples known of a Southron coming north and pillaging the Scots. However, I was not sorry when it was all over, as I had been hard at work since October and began to get tired.
The wife and babies from the south, and I from the north, met here a fortnight ago and we have been idling very pleasantly ever since. The place is very pretty and our host kindness itself. Miss Matthaei and five of the bairns are at Cartington—a moorland farmhouse three miles off—and in point of rosy cheeks and appetites might compete with any five children of their age and weight. Jess and Mady are here with us and have been doing great execution at a ball at Newcastle. I really don't know myself when I look at these young women, and my hatred of possible sons-in-law is deadly. All send their love.
Ever yours very faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
Wish you joy of Bristol.
[The following letter to Darwin was written when the Polar Expedition under Sir George Nares was in preparation. It illustrates the range of observation which his friends had learned to expect in him:—]
Athenaeum Club, January 22, 1875.
My dear Darwin,
I write on behalf of the Polar Committee of the Royal Society to ask for any suggestions you may be inclined to offer us as instructions to the naturalists who are to accompany the new expedition.
The task of drawing up detailed instructions is divided among a lot of us; but you are as full of ideas as an egg is full of meat, and are shrewdly suspected of having, somewhere in your capacious cranium, a store of notions which would be of great value to the naturalists.
All I can say is, that if you have not already "collated facts" on this topic, it will be the first subject I ever suggested to you on which you had not.
Of course we do not expect you to put yourself to any great trouble—nor ask for such a thing—but if you will jot down any notes that occur to you we shall be thankful.
We must have everything in hand for printing by March 15.
Ever yours very faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
[The following letter dates from soon after the death of Charles
Kingsley:—]
Science Schools, South Kensington, October 22, 1875.
Dear Miss Kingsley,
I sincerely trust that you believe I have been abroad and prostrated by illness, and have thereby accounted for receiving no reply to your letter of a fortnight back.
The fact is that it has only just reached me, owing to the neglect of the people in Jermyn Street, who ought to have sent it on here.
I assure you I have not forgotten the brief interview to which you refer, and I have often regretted that the hurry and worry of life (which increases with the square of your distance from youth) never allowed me to take advantage of your kind father's invitation to become better acquainted with him and his. I found his card in Jermyn Street when I returned last year, with a pencilled request that I would call on him at Westminster.
I meant to do so, but the whirl of things delayed me until, as I bitterly regret, it was too late.
I am not sure that I have any important letter of your father's but one, written to me some fifteen years ago, on the occasion of the death of a child who was then my only son. It was in reply to a letter of my own written in a humour of savage grief. Most likely he burned the letter, and his reply would be hardly intelligible without it. Moreover, I am not at all sure that I can lay my hands upon your father's letter in a certain chaos of papers which I have never had the courage to face for years. But if you wish I will try.
I am very grieved to hear of Mrs. Kingsley's indisposition. Pray make my kindest remembrances to her, and believe me your very faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
P.S.—By the way, letters addressed to my private residence,
4 Marlborough Place, N.W.,
are sure not to be delayed. And I have another reason for giving the address—the hope that when you come to Town you will let my wife and daughters make your acquaintance.
[His continued interest in the germ-theory and the question of the origin of life ("Address at the British Association" 1870 see 2 page 14, sq.), appears from the following:—]
4 Marlborough Place, October 15, 1875.
My dear Tyndall,
Will you bring with you to the x to-morrow a little bottle full of fluid containing the bacteria you have found developed in your infusions? I mean a good characteristic specimen. It will be useful to you, I think, if I determine the forms with my own microscope, and make drawings of them which you can use.
Ever yours,
T.H. Huxley.
I can't tell you how delighted I was with the experiments.
[Throughout this period, and for some time later, he was in frequent communication with Thomas Spencer Baynes, Professor of Logic and English Literature at St. Andrews University, the editor of the new "Encyclopaedia Britannica," work upon which was begun at the end of 1873. From the first Huxley was an active helper, both in classifying the biological subjects which ought to be treated of, suggesting the right men to undertake the work, and himself writing several articles, notably that on Evolution. (Others were "Actinozoa," "Amphibia," "Animal Kingdom," and "Biology.")
Extracts from his letters to Professor Baynes between the years 1873 and 1884, serve to illustrate the work which he did and the relations he maintained with the genial and learned editor.]
November 2, 1873.
I have been spending my Sunday morning in drawing up a list of headings, which will I think exhaust biology from the Animal point of view, and each of which does not involve more than you are likely to get from one man. In many cases, i.e. "Insecta," "Entomology," I have subdivided the subjects, because, by an unlucky peculiarity of workers in these subjects, men who understand zoology from its systematic side are often ignorant of anatomy, and those who know fossils are often weak in recent forms.
But of course the subdivision does not imply that one man should not take the whole if he is competent to do so. And if separate contributors supply articles on these several subdivisions, somebody must see that they work in harmony.
[But with all the good will in the world, he was too hard pressed to get his quota done as quickly as he wished. He suggests at once that "Hydrozoa" and "Actinozoa," in his list, should be dealt with by the writer of the article "Coelenterata."]
Shunting "Actinozoa" to "Coelenterata" would do no harm, and would have the great merit of letting me breathe a little. But if you think better that "Actinozoa" should come in its place under A, I will try what I can do.
December 30, 1873.
As to "Anthropology," I really am afraid to promise. At present I am plunged in "Amphibia," doing a lot of original work to settle questions which have been hanging vaguely in my mind for years. If "Amphibia" is done by the end of January it is as much as it will be.
In February I must give myself—or at any rate my spare self—up to my Rectorial Address [His Rectorial Address at Aberdeen, see above.], which (tell it not in Gath) I wish at the bottom of the Red Sea. And I do not suppose I shall be able to look seriously at either "Animal Kingdom" or "Anthropology" before the address is done with. And all depends on the centre of my microcosm—intestinum colon—which plays me a trick every now and then.
I will do what I can if you like, but if you trust me it is at your proper peril.
February 8, 1874.
How astonished folks will be if eloquent passages out of the address get among the "Amphibia," and comments on Frog anatomy into the address. As I am working at both just now this result is not improbable.
[Meanwhile the address and the ten days' stay at Aberdeen had been] "playing havoc with the "Amphibia," [but on returning home, he went to work upon the latter, and writes on March 12:—]
I did not care to answer your last letter until I had an instalment of "Amphibia" ready. Said instalment was sent off to you, care of Messrs. Black, yesterday, and now I feel like Dick Swiveller, when happy circumstances having enabled him to pay off an old score he was able to begin running up another.
June 8.
I have had sundry proofs and returned them. My writing is lamentable when I am in a hurry, but I never provoked a strike before! I declare I think I write as well as the editor, on ordinary occasions.
[He was pleased to find someone who wrote as badly as, or worse than, himself, and several times rallies Baynes on that score. Thus, when Mrs. Baynes had acted as her husband's amanuensis, he writes (February 11, 1878):—]
My respectful compliments to the "mere machine," whose beautiful calligraphy (if that isn't a tautology) leaves no doubt in my mind that whether the writing of your letters by that agency is good for you or not it is admirable for your correspondents.
Why people can't write a plain legible hand I can't imagine.
[(NB.—This sentence is written purposely in a most illegible hand.)
And on another occasion he adds a postcript to say,] "You write worse than ever. So do I."
[However, the article got finished in course of time:—]
August 5.
I have seen and done with all "Amphibia" but the last sheet, and that only waits revise. Considering it was to be done in May, I think I am pretty punctual.
[The next year, immediately before taking Sir Wyville Thomson's lectures at Edinburgh, he writes about another article which he had in hand:—]
4 Marlborough Place, N.W., March 16, 1875.
My dear Baynes,
I am working against time to get a lot of things done—amongst others BIOLOGY—before I go north. I have written a large part of said article, and it would facilitate my operation immensely if what is done were set up and I had two or three proofs, one for Dyer, who is to do part of the article.
Now, if I send the manuscript to North Bridge will you swear by your gods (0—1—3—1 or any greater number as the case may be) that I shall have a proof swiftly and not be kept waiting for weeks till the whole thing has got cold, and I am at something else a hundred miles away from Biology?
If not I will keep the manuscript till it is all done, and you know what that means.
Ever yours very truly,
T.H. Huxley.
Cragside, Morpeth, August 12, 1875.
My dear Baynes,
The remainder of the proof of "Biology" is posted to-day—"Praise de
Lor'."
I have a dim recollection of having been led by your soft and insinuating ways to say that I would think (only THINK) about some other article. What the deuce was it?
I have told the Royal Society people to send you a list of Fellows, addressed to Black's.
We have had here what may be called bad weather for England, but it has been far better than the best Edinburgh weather known to my experience.
All my friends are out committing grouse-murder. As a vivisection
Commissioner I did not think I could properly accompany them.
Ever yours very faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
Cragside, Morpeth, August 24, 1875.
My dear Baynes,
I think — is like enough to do the "Coelenterata" well if you can make sure of his doing it at all. He is a man of really great knowledge of the literature of Zoology, and if it had not been for the accident of being a procrastinating impracticable ass, he could have been a distinguished man. But he is a sort of Balaam-Centaur with the asinine stronger than the prophetic moiety.
I should be disposed to try him, nevertheless.
I don't think I have had final revise of Biology yet.
I do not know that "Coelenterata" is Lankester's speciality. However, he is sure to do it well if he takes it up.
Ever yours very faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
4 Marlborough Place, N.W., October 12, 1875.
My dear Baynes,
Do you remember my telling you that I should before long be publishing a book, of which general considerations on Biology would form a part, and that I should have to go over the same ground as in the article for the Encyclopaedia?
Well, that prediction is about to be verified, and I want to know what
I am to do.
You see, as I am neither dealing with Theology, nor History, nor Criticism, I can't take a fresh departure and say something entirely different from what I have just written.
On the other hand, if I republish what stands in the article, the
Encyclopaedia very naturally growls.
What do the sweetest of Editors and the most liberal of Proprietors say ought to be done under the circumstances?
I pause for a reply.
I have carried about Stanley's note in my pocket-book until I am sorry to say the flyleaf has become hideously stained. [The Dean's handwriting was proverbial.]
The wife and daughters could make nothing of it, but I, accustomed to the manuscript of certain correspondents, have no doubt as to the fourth word of the second sentence. It is "Canterbury." [The writing of this word is carefully slurred until it is almost as illegible as the original.] Nothing can be plainer.
Hoping the solution is entirely satisfactory,
Believe me, ever yours very faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
[Though he refused to undertake the article on "Distribution," he managed to write that on "Evolution" (republished in "Collected Essays" 2 187). Thus on July 28, 1877, he writes:—]
I ought to do "Evolution," but I mightn't and I shouldn't. Don't see how it is practicable to do justice to it with the time at my disposal, though I really should like to do it, and I am at my wits' end to think of anybody who can be trusted with it.
Perhaps something may turn up, and if so I will let you know.
[The something in the world of more time did turn up by dint of extra pressure, and the article got written in the course of the autumn, as appears from the following of December 29, 1877:—]
I send you the promised skeleton (with a good deal of the flesh) of
Evolution. It is costing me infinite labour in the way of reading, but
I am glad to be obliged to do the work, which will be a curious and
instructive chapter in the history of Science.
[The lawyer-like faculty of putting aside a subject when done with, which is indicated in the letter of March 16, 1875, reappears in the following:—]
4 Marlborough Place, N.W., March 18, 1878.
My dear Baynes,
Your printers are the worst species of that diabolic genus I know of. It is at least a month since I sent them a revise of "Evolution" by no means finished, and from that time to this I have had nothing from them.
I shall forget all about the subject, and then at the last moment they will send me a revise in a great hurry, and expect it back by return of post.
But if they get it, may I go to their Father!
Ever yours very faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
[Later on, the pressure of work again forbade him to undertake further articles on "Harvey," "Hunter," and "Instinct."]
I am sorry to say that my hands are full, and I have sworn by as many gods as Hume has left me, to undertake nothing more for a long while beyond what I am already pledged to do, a small book anent Harvey being one of these things.
[And on June 9:—]
After nine days' meditation (directed exclusively to the Harvey and Hunter question) I am not any "forrarder," as the farmer said after his third bottle of Gladstone claret. So perhaps I had better mention the fact. I am very glad you have limed Flower for "Mammalia" and "Horse"—nobody could be better.
4 Marlborough Place, N.W., July 1, 1879.
My dear Baynes,
On Thursday last I sought for you at the Athenaeum in the middle of the day, and told them to let me know if you came in the evening when I was there again. But I doubt not you were plunged in dissipation.
My demonstrator Parker showed me to-day a letter he had received from Black's, asking him to do anything in the small Zoology way between H and L.
He is a modest man, and so didn't ask what the H—L he was to do, but he looked it.
Will you enlighten him or me, and I will convey the information on?
I had another daughter married yesterday. She was a great pet and it is very hard lines on father and mother. The only consolation is that she has married a right good fellow, John Collier the artist.
Ever yours very faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
July 19, 1879.
Many thanks for your and Mrs. Baynes' congratulations. I am very well content with my son-in-law, and have almost forgiven him for carrying off one of my pets, which shows a Christian spirit hardly to be expected of me.
South Kensington, July 2, 1880.
My dear Baynes,
I have been thinking over the matter of Instinct, and have come to the conclusion that I dare not undertake anything fresh.
There is an address at Birmingham in the autumn looming large, and ghosts of unfinished work flitter threateningly.
Ever yours very faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
CHAPTER 2.8.
1876.
[The year 1876 was again a busy one, almost as busy as any that went before. As in 1875, his London work was cut in two by a course of lectures in Edinburgh, and sittings of the Royal Commission on Scottish Universities, and furthermore, by a trip to America in his summer vacation.
In the winter and early spring he gave his usual lectures at South Kensington; a course to working men "On the Evidence as to the Origin of Existing Vertebrated Animals," from February to April ("Nature" volumes 13 and 14); a lecture at the Royal Institution (January 28) "On the Border Territory between the Animal and Vegetable Kingdoms" ("Collected Essays" 8 170); and another at Glasgow (February 15) "On the Teleology and Morphology of the Hand."
In this lecture, which he never found time to get into final shape for publication, but which was substantially repeated at the Working Men's College in 1878, he touched upon one of the philosophic aspects of the theory of evolution, namely, how far is it consistent with the argument from design?
Granting provisionally the force of Paley's argument in individual cases of adaptation, and illustrating it by the hand and its representative in various of the Mammalia, he proceeds to show by the facts of morphology that the argument, as commonly stated, fails; that each mechanism, each animal, was not specially made to suit the particular purpose we find it serving, but was developed from a single common type. Yet in a limited and special sense he finds teleology to be not inconsistent with morphology. The two sets of facts flow from a common cause, evolution. Descent by modification accounts for similarity of structure; the process of gradual adaptation to conditions accounts for the existing adaptation to purpose. To be a teleologist and yet accept evolution it is only necessary] "to suppose that the original plan was sketched out—that the purpose was foreshadowed in the molecular arrangements out of which the animals have come."
[This was no new view of his. While, ever since his first review of the "Origin" in 1859 ("Collected Essays" 2 6), he had declared the commoner and coarser forms of teleology to find their most formidable opponent in the theory of evolution, and in 1869, addressing the Geological Society, had spoken of] "those final causes, which have been named barren virgins, but which might be more fitly termed the hetairae of philosophy, so constantly have they led men astray" [(ib. 8 80; cp. 2 21, 36), he had, in his "Criticism of the Origin" (1864 2 86), and the "Genealogy of Animals" (1869 2 109 sqq.), shown how] "perhaps the most remarkable service to the philosophy of Biology rendered by Mr. Darwin is the reconciliation of teleology and morphology, and the explanation of the facts of both which his views offer…the wider teleology, which is actually based upon the fundamental proposition of evolution."
[His notebook shows that he was busy with Reptilia from Elgin and from India; and with his "Manual of Invertebrate Anatomy," which was published the next year; while he refused to undertake a course of ten lectures at the Royal Institution, saying that he had already too much other work to do, and would have no time for original work.
About this time, also, in answer to a request from a believer in miracles,] "that those who fail to perceive the cogency of the evidence by which the occurrence of miracles is supported, should not confine themselves to the discussion of general principles, but should grapple with some particular case of an alleged miracle," [he read before the Metaphysical Society a paper dealing with the evidence for the miracle of the resurrection. (See volume 1.)
Some friends wished him to publish the paper as a contribution to criticism; but his own doubts as to the opportuneness of so doing were confirmed by a letter from Mr. John Morley, then editor of the "Fortnightly Review," to which he replied (January 18):—]
To say truth, most of the considerations you put so forcibly had passed through my mind—but one always suspects oneself of cowardice when one's own interests may be affected.
[At the beginning of May he went to Edinburgh. He writes home on May 8:—]
I am in hopes of being left to myself this time, as nobody has called but Sir Alexander Grant the Principal, Crum Brown, whom I met in the street just now, and Lister, who has a patient in the house. I have been getting through an enormous quantity of reading, some tough monographs that I brought with me, the first volume of Forster's "Life of Swift," "Goodsir's Life," and a couple of novels of George Sand, with a trifle of Paul Heyse. You should read George Sand's "Cesarine Dietrich" and "La Mare au Diable" that I have just finished. She is bigger than George Eliot, more flexible, a more thorough artist. It is a queer thing, by the way, that I have never read "Consuelo." I shall get it here. When I come back from my lecture I like to rest for an hour or two over a good story. It freshens me wonderfully.
[However, social Edinburgh did not leave him long to himself, but though he might thus lose something of working time, this loss was counterbalanced by the dispelling of some of the fits of depression which still assailed him from time to time.
On May 25 he writes:—]
The General Assembly is sitting now, and I thought I would look in. It was very crowded and I had to stand, so I was soon spied out and invited to sit beside the Lord High Commissioner, who represents the Crown in the Assembly, and there I heard an ecclesiastical row about whether a certain church should be allowed to have a cover with IHS on the Communion Table or not. After three hours' discussion the IHSers were beaten. I was introduced to the Commissioner Lord Galloway, and asked to dine to-night. So I felt bound to go to the special levee at Holyrood with my colleagues this morning, and I shall have to go to my Lady Galloway's reception in honour of the Queen's birthday to-morrow. Luckily there will be no more of it. Vanity of Vanities! Saturday afternoon I go out to Lord Young's place to spend Sunday. I have been in rather a hypochondriacal state of mind, and I will see if this course of medicine will drive the seven devils out.
[One of the chief friendships which sprang from this residence in Edinburgh was that with Dr. (afterwards Sir John) Skelton, widely known under his literary pseudonym of "Shirley." A Civil servant as well as a man of letters, he united practical life with literature, a combination that appealed particularly to Huxley, so that he was a constant visitor at Dr. Skelton's picturesque house, the Hermitage of Braid, near Edinburgh. A number of letters addressed to Skelton from 1875 to 1891 show that with him Huxley felt the stimulus of an appreciative correspondent.]
4 Melville Street, Edinburgh, June 23, 1876.
My dear Skelton,
I do not understand how it is that your note has been so long in reaching me; but I hasten to repel the libellous insinuation that I have vowed a vow against dining at the Hermitage.
I wish I could support that repudiation by at once accepting your invitation for Saturday or Sunday, but my Saturdays and Sundays are mortgaged to one or other of your judges (good judges, obviously).
Shall you be at home on Monday or Tuesday? If so, I would put on a kilt (to be as little dressed as possible), and find my way out and back; happily improving my mind on the journey with the tracts you mention.
Ever yours very faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
4 Melville Street, Edinburgh, July 1, 1876.
My dear Skelton,
Very many thanks for the copy of the "Comedy of the Noctes," which reached me two or three days ago. Turning over the pages I came upon the Shepherd's "Terrible Journey of Timbuctoo," which I enjoyed as much as when I first read it thirty odd years ago.
Ever yours very faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
[On June 23 he writes home:—]
Did you read Gilman's note asking me to give the inaugural discourse at the Johns Hopkins University, and offering 100 pounds sterling on the part of the trustees? I am minded to do it on our way back from the south, but don't much like taking money for the performance. Tell me what you think about this at once, as I must reply.
[This visit to America had been under discussion for some time. It is mentioned as a possibility in a letter to Darwin two years before. Early in 1876 Mr. Frederic Harrison was commissioned by an American correspondent—who, by the way, had named his son Thomas Huxley—to give my father the following message:—"The whole nation is electrified by the announcement that Professor Huxley is to visit us next fall. We will make infinitely more of him than we did of the Prince of Wales and his retinue of lords and dukes." Certainly the people of the States gave him an enthusiastic welcome; his writings had made him known far and wide; as the manager of the Californian department at the Philadelphia Exhibition told him, the very miners of California read his books over their camp fires; and his visit was so far like a royal progress, that unless he entered a city disguised under the name of Jones or Smith, he was liable not merely to be interviewed, but to be called upon to "address a few words" to the citizens.
Leaving their family under the hospitable care of Sir W. and Lady Armstrong at Cragside, my father and mother started on July 27 on board the "Germanic," reaching New York on August 5. My father sometimes would refer, half-jestingly, to the trip as his second honeymoon, when, for the first time in twenty years, he and my mother set forth by themselves, free from all family cares. And indeed, there was the underlying resemblance that this too came at the end of a period of struggle to attain, and marked the beginning of a more settled period. His reception in America may be said to emphasise his definite establishment in the first rank of English thinkers. It was a signal testimony to the wide extent of his influence, hardly suspected, indeed, by himself; an influence due above all to the fact that he did not allow his studies to stand apart from the moving problems of existence, but brought the new and regenerating ideas into contact with life at every point, and that his championship of the new doctrines had at the same time been a championship of freedom and sincerity in thought and word against shams and self-deceptions of every kind. It was not so much the preacher of new doctrines who was welcomed, as the apostle of veracity—not so much the student of science as the teacher of men.
Moreover, another sentiment coloured this holiday visit. He was to see again the beloved sister of his boyhood. She had always prophesied his success, and now after thirty years her prophesy was fulfilled by his coming, and, indeed, exceeded by the manner of it.
Mr. Smalley, then London correspondent of the "New York Tribune," was a fellow passenger of his on board the "Germanic," and tells an interesting anecdote of him:—
Mr. Huxley stood on the deck of the "Germanic" as she steamed up the harbour of New York, and he enjoyed to the full that marvellous panorama. At all times he was on intimate terms with Nature and also with the joint work of Nature and Man; Man's place in Nature being to him interesting from more points of view than one. As we drew near the city—this was in 1876, you will remember—he asked what were the tall tower and tall building with a cupola, then the two most conspicuous objects. I told him the Tribune and the Western Union Telegraph buildings. "Ah," he said, "that is interesting; that is American. In the old World the first things you see as you approach a great city are steeples; here you see, first, centres of intelligence." Next to those the tug-boats seemed to attract him as they tore fiercely up and down and across the bay. He looked long at them and finally said,] "If I were not a man I think I should like to be a tug." [They seemed to him the condensation and complete expression of the energy and force in which he delighted.
The personal welcome he received from the friends he visited was of the warmest. On the arrival of the "Germanic" the travellers were met by Mr. Appleton the publisher, and carried off to his country house at Riverdale. While his wife was taken to Saratoga to see what an American summer resort was like, he himself went on the 9th to New Haven, to inspect the fossils at Yale College, collected from the Tertiary deposits of the Far West by Professor Marsh, with great labour and sometimes at the risk of his scalp. Professor Marsh told me how he took him to the University, and proposed to begin by showing him over the buildings. He refused.] "Show me what you have got inside them; I can see plenty of bricks and mortar in my own country." [So they went straight to the fossils, and as Professor Marsh writes ("American Journal of Science" volume 1 August 1895.):—
One of Huxley's lectures in New York was to be on the genealogy of the horse, a subject which he had already written about, based entirely upon European specimens. My own explorations had led me to conclusions quite different from his, and my specimens seemed to me to prove conclusively that the horse originated in the New World and not in the Old, and that its genealogy must be worked out here. With some hesitation, I laid the whole matter frankly before Huxley, and he spent nearly two days going over my specimens with me, and testing each point I made.
At each inquiry, whether he had a specimen to illustrate such and such a point or exemplify a transition from earlier and less specialised forms to later and more specialised ones, Professor Marsh would simply turn to his assistant and bid him fetch box number so and so, until Huxley turned upon him and said,] "I believe you are a magician; whatever I want, you just conjure it up."
[The upshot of this examination was that he recast a great part of what he meant to say at New York. When he had seen the specimens, and thoroughly weighed their import, continues Professor Marsh:—
He then informed me that all this was new to him, and that my facts demonstrated the evolution of the horse beyond question, and for the first time indicated the direct line of descent of an existing animal. With the generosity of true greatness, he gave up his own opinions in the face of new truth, and took my conclusions as the basis of his famous New York lecture on the horse. He urged me to prepare without delay a volume on the genealogy of the horse, based upon the specimens I had shown him. This I promised, but other work and new duties have thus far prevented.
A letter to his wife describes his visit to Yale:—]
My excellent host met me at the station, and seems as if he could not make enough of me. I am installed in apartments which were occupied by his uncle, the millionaire Peabody, and am as quiet as if I were in my own house. We have had a preliminary canter over the fossils, and I have seen some things which were worth all the journey across.
This is the most charmingly picturesque town, with the streets lined by avenues of elm trees which meet overhead. I have never seen anything like it, and you must come and look at it. There is fossil work enough to occupy me till the end of the week, and I have arranged to go to Springfield on Monday to examine the famous footprints of the Connecticut Valley.
The Governor has called upon me, and I shall have to go and do pretty-behaved chez lui to-morrow. An application has come for an autograph, but I have not been interviewed!
[This immunity, however, did not last long. He appears to have been caught by the interviewer the next day, for he writes on the 11th:—]
I have not seen the notice in the "World" you speak of. You will be amused at the article written by the interviewer. He was evidently surprised to meet with so little of the "high falutin" philosopher in me, and says I am "affable" and of "the commercial or mercantile" type. That is something I did not know, and I am rather proud of it. We may be rich yet.
[As to his work at Yale Museum, he writes in the same letter:—]
We are hard at work still. Breakfast at 8.30—go over to the Museum with Marsh at 9 or 10—work till 1.30—dine—go back to Museum to work till 6. Then Marsh takes me for a drive to see the views about the town, and back to tea about half-past eight. He is a wonderfully good fellow, full of fun and stories about his Western adventures, and the collection of fossils is the most wonderful thing I ever saw. I wish I could spare three weeks instead of one to study it.
To-morrow evening were are to have a dinner by way of winding up, and he has asked a lot of notables to meet me. I assure you I am being "made of," as I thought nobody but the little wife was foolish enough to do.
[On the 16th he left to join Professor Alexander Agassiz at Newport, whence he wrote the following letters:—]
Newport, August 17, 1876.
My dear Marsh,
I really cannot say how much I enjoyed my visit to New Haven. My recollections are sorting themselves out by degrees and I find how rich my store is. The more I think of it the more clear it is that your great work is the settlement of the pedigree of the horse.
My wife joins with me in kind regards. I am yours very faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
[To Mr. Clarence King.]
Newport, August 19, 1876.
My dear Sir,
In accordance with your wish, I very willingly put into writing the substance of the opinion as to the importance of Professor Marsh's collection of fossils which I expressed to you yesterday. As you are aware, I devoted four or five days to the examination of this collection, and was enabled by Professor Marsh's kindness to obtain a fair conception of the whole.
I am disposed to think that whether we regard the abundance of material, the number of complete skeletons of the various species, or the extent of geological time covered by the collection, which I had the good fortune to see at New Haven, there is no collection of fossil vertebrates in existence, which can be compared with it. I say this without forgetting Montmartre, Siwalik, or Pikermi—and I think that I am quite safe in adding that no collection which has been hitherto formed approaches that made by Professor Marsh, in the completeness of the chain of evidence by which certain existing mammals are connected with their older tertiary ancestry.
It is of the highest importance to the progress of Biological Science that the publication of this evidence, accompanied by illustrations of such fulness as to enable paleontologists to form their own judgment as to its value, should take place without delay.
I am yours very faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
[Breaking their journey at Boston, they went from Newport to Petersham, in the highlands of Worcester County, where they were the guests of Mr. and Mrs. John Fiske, at their summer home. Among the other visitors were the eminent musical composer Mr. Paine, the poet Cranch, and daughters of Hawthorne and Longfellow, so that they found themselves in the midst of a particularly cheerful and delightful party. From Petersham they proceeded to Buffalo, the meeting-place that year of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, which my father had promised to attend. Here they stayed with Mr. Marshall, a leading lawyer, who afterwards visited them in England.
Awake was spent at Niagara, partly in making holiday, partly in shaping the lectures which had to be delivered at the end of the trip. As to the impression made upon him by the Falls—an experience which, it is generally presumed, every traveller is bound to record—I may note that after the first disappointment at their appearance, inevitable wherever the height of a waterfall is less than the breadth, he found in them an inexhaustible charm and fascination. As in duty bound, he, with my mother, completed his experiences by going under the wall of waters to the "Cave of the Winds." But of all things nothing pleased him more than to sit of an evening by the edge of the river, and through the roar of the cataract to listen for the under-sound of the beaten stones grinding together at its foot.
Leaving Niagara on September 2, they travelled to Cincinnati, a 20-hours' journey, where they rested a day; on the 4th another 10 hours took them to Nashville, where they were to meet his sister, Mrs. Scott. Though 11 years his senior, she maintained her vigour and brightness undimmed, as indeed she did to the end of her life, surviving him by a few weeks. As she now stood on the platform at Nashville, Mrs. Huxley, who had never seen her, picked her out from among all the people by her piercing black eyes, so like those of her mother as described in the Autobiographical sketch ("Collected Essays" 1).
Nashville, her son's home, had been chosen as the meeting-place by Mrs. Scott, because it was not so far south nor so hot as Montgomery, where she was then living. Nevertheless in Tennessee the heat of the American summer was very trying, and the good people of the town further drew upon the too limited opportunities of their guest's brief visit by sending a formal deputation to beg that he would either deliver an address, or be entertained at a public dinner, or "state his views"—to an interviewer I suppose. He could not well refuse one of the alternatives; and the greater part of one day was spent in preparing a short address on the geology of Tennessee, which was delivered on the evening of September 7. He spoke for twenty minutes, but had scarcely any voice, which was not to be wondered at, as he was so tired that he had kept his room the whole day, while his wife received the endless string of callers.
The next day they returned to Cincinnati; and on the 9th went on to
Baltimore, where they stayed with Mr. Garrett, then President of the
Baltimore and Ohio railway.
The Johns Hopkins University at Baltimore, for which he was to deliver the opening address, had been instituted by its founder on a novel basis. It was devoted to post-graduate study; the professors and lecturers received incomes entirely independent of the pupils they taught. Men came to study for the sake of learning, not for the sake of passing some future examination. The endowment was devoted in the first place to the furtherance of research; the erection of buildings was put into the background.] "It has been my fate," [commented Huxley,] "to see great educational funds fossilise into mere bricks and mortar in the petrifying springs of architecture, with nothing left to work them. A great warrior is said to have made a desert and called it peace. Trustees have sometimes made a palace and called it a university."
[Half the fortune of the founder had gone to this university; the other half to the foundation of a great and splendidly equipped hospital for Baltimore. This was the reason why the discussion of medical training occupies fully half of the address upon the general principles of education, in which, indeed, lies the heart of his message to America, a message already delivered to the old country, but specially appropriate for the new nation developing so rapidly in size and physical resources.]
I cannot say that I am in the slightest degree impressed by your bigness or your material resources, as such. Size is not grandeur, territory does not make a nation. The great issue, about which hangs a true sublimity, and the terror of overhanging fate, is, what are you going to do with all these things?…
The one condition of success, your sole safeguard, is the moral worth and intellectual clearness of the individual citizen. Education cannot give these, but it can cherish them and bring them to the front in whatever station of society they are to be found, and the universities ought to be and may be, the fortresses of the higher life of the nation.
[This address was delivered under circumstances of peculiar difficulty. The day before, an expedition had been made to Washington, from which Huxley returned very tired, only to be told that he was to attend a formal dinner and reception the same evening.] "I don't know how I shall stand it," [he remarked. Going to his room, he snatched an hour or two of rest, but was then called upon to finish his address before going out. It seems that it had to be ready for simultaneous publication in the New York papers. Now the lecture was not written out; it was to be given from notes only. So he had to deliver it in extenso to the reporter, who took it down in shorthand, promising to let him have a longhand copy in good time the next morning. It did not come till the last moment. Glancing at it on his way to the lecture theatre, he discovered to his horror that it was written upon "flimsy," from which he would not be able to read it with any success. He wisely gave up the attempt, and made up his mind to deliver the lecture as best he could from memory. The lecture as delivered was very nearly the same as that which he had dictated the night before, but with some curious discrepancies between the two accounts, which, he used to say, occurring as they did in versions both purporting to have been taken down from his lips, might well lead the ingenious critic of the future to pronounce them both spurious, and to declare that the pretended original was never delivered under the circumstances alleged. (Cp. the incident at Belfast.)
There was an audience of some 2000, and I am told that when he began to speak of the time that would come when they too would experience the dangers of over-population and poverty in their midst, and would then understand what Europe had to contend with more fully than they did, a pin could have been heard to drop. At the end of the lecture, amid the enthusiastic applause of the crowd, he made his way to the front of the box where his hosts and their party were, and received their warm congratulations. But he missed one voice amongst them, and turning to where his wife sat in silent triumph almost beyond speech, he said,] "And have you no word for me?" [then, himself also deeply moved, stooped down and kissed her.
This address was delivered on Tuesday, September 12. On the 14th he went to Philadelphia, and on the 15th to New York, where he delivered his three lectures on Evolution on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, September 18, 20, and 22.
These lectures are very good examples of the skill with which he could present a complicated subject in a simple form, the subject seeming to unroll itself by the force of its own naked logic, and carrying conviction the further through the simplicity of its presentation. Indeed, an unfriendly critic once paid him an unintended compliment, when trying to make out that he was no great speaker; that all he did was to set some interesting theory unadorned before his audience, when such success as he attained was due to the compelling nature of the subject itself.
Since his earlier lectures to the public on evolution, the paleontological evidences had been accumulating; the case could be stated without some of the reservations of former days; and he brings forward two telling instances in considerable detail, the one showing how the gulf between two such apparently distinct groups as Birds and Reptiles is bridged over by ancient fossils intermediate in form; the other illustrating from Professor Marsh's new collections the lineal descent of the specialised Horse from the more general type of quadruped.
The farthest back of these was a creature with four toes on the front limb and three on the hind limb. Judging from the completeness of the series or forms so far, he ventured to indulge in a prophecy.]
Thus, thanks to these important researches, it has become evident that, so far as our present knowledge extends, the history of the horse-type is exactly and precisely that which could have been predicted from a knowledge of the principles of evolution. And the knowledge we now possess justifies us completely in the anticipation that when the still lower Eocene deposits, and those which belong to the Cretaceous epoch, have yielded up their remains of ancestral equine animals, we shall find, first, a form with four complete toes and a rudiment of the innermost or first digit in front, with, probably, a rudiment of the fifth digit in the hind foot; while, in still older forms, the series of the digits will be more and more complete, until we come to the five-toed animals, in which, if the doctrine of evolution is well founded, the whole series must have taken its origin.
[Seldom has prophecy been sooner fulfilled. Within two months,
Professor Marsh had discovered a new genus of equine mammals,
Eohippus, from the lowest Eocene deposits of the West, which
corresponds very nearly to the description given above.