Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley — Volume 1Huxley, Thomas Henry
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Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley — Volume 1
Huxley, Thomas Henry
Huxley, Thomas Henry, 1825-1895; Naturalists -- England -- Biography
The more I think of it the more it seems to me it ought to answer if
properly conducted, and it ought to be of great use.
[The first number appeared in January 1861. Writing on the 6th, Huxley
says:--]
It is pleasant to get such expressions of opinion as I have had from
Lyell and Darwin about the Review. They make me quite hopeful about its
prosperity, as I am sure we shall be able to do better than our first
number.
[It was not long, however, before Lyell's prophecy began to come true.
In June Huxley writes:--]
It is no use letting other people look after the journal. I find unless
I revise every page of it, it goes wrong.
[But in July 1863 he definitely ceased to contribute:--]
I did not foresee all this crush of work [he writes], when the "Review"
was first started, or I should not have pledged myself to any share in
supplying it. [Moreover, with the appointment of paid editors that year,
it seemed to him] that the working editors with the credit and pay must
take the responsibility of all the commissariat of the "Review" upon
their shoulders.
Two years later, in 1865, the "Review" came to an end. As Mr. Murray,
the publisher, remarked, quarterlies did not pay; and this quarterly
became still more financially unsound after the over-worked volunteers,
who both edited and contributed, gave place to paid editors.
But Huxley was not satisfied with one defeat. The quarterly scheme had
failed; he now tried if he could not serve science better by returning
to a more frequent and more popular form of periodical. From 1863 to
1866 he was concerned with the "Reader," a weekly issue (The committee
also included Professor Cairns, F. Galton, W.F. Pollock, and J.
Tyndall.); but this also was too heavy a burden to be borne in addition
to his other work. However, the labour expended in these ventures was
not wholly thrown away. The experience thus gained at last enabled the
present Sir Norman Lockyer, who acted as science editor for the
"Reader," to realise what had so long been aimed at by the establishment
of "Nature" in 1869.
Apart from his contributions to the species question and the foundation
of a scientific review, Huxley published in 1860 only two special
monographs ("On Jacare and Caiman," and "On the Mouth and Pharynx of the
Scorpion," already mentioned as read in the previous year), but he read
"Further Observations on Pyrosoma" at the Linnean Society, and was busy
with paleontological work, the results of which appeared in three papers
the following year, the most important of which was the Memoir called a
"Preliminary Essay on the Arrangement of the Devonian Fishes," in the
report of the Geological Survey, "which," says Sir M. Foster, "though
entitled a Preliminary Essay, threw an entirely new light on the
affinities of these creatures, and, with the continuation published
later, in 1866, still remains a standard work."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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