Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley — Volume 1Huxley, Thomas Henry
Science
Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley — Volume 1
Huxley, Thomas Henry
Huxley, Thomas Henry, 1825-1895; Naturalists -- England -- Biography
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 assist 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 illustrations.
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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