Huxley was the father of modern laboratory instruction; but in 1879 he was so intensely engrossed with his own researches that he very seldom came through the laboratory, which was ably directed by T. Jeffery Parker, assisted by Howes and W. Newton Parker, all of whom are now professors, Howes having succeeded to Huxley's chair. Each visit, therefore, inspired a certain amount of terror, which was really unwarranted, for Huxley always spoke in the kindest tones to his students, although sometimes he could not resist making fun at their expense. There was an Irish student who sat in front of me, whose anatomical drawings in water-colour were certainly most remarkable productions. Huxley, in turning over his drawing-book, paused at a large blur, under which was carefully inscribed, "sheep's liver," and smilingly said], "I am glad to know that is a liver; it reminds me as much of Cologne cathedral in a fog as of anything I have ever seen before." [Fortunately the nationality of the student enabled him to fully appreciate the humour. The same note is sounded in Professor Mivart's description of these lectures in his Reminiscences:-- The great value of Huxley's anatomical ideas, and the admirable clearness with which he explained them, led me in the autumn of 1861 to seek admission as a student to his course of lectures at the School of Mines in Jermyn Street. When I entered his small room there to make this request, he was giving the finishing touches to a dissection of part of the nervous system of a skate, worked out for the benefit of his students. He welcomed my application with the greatest cordiality, save that he insisted I should be only an honorary student, or rather, should assist at his lectures as a friend. I availed myself of his permission on the very next day, and subsequently attended almost all his lectures there and elsewhere, so that he one day said to me, "I shall call you my 'constant reader.'" To be such a reader was to me an inestimable privilege, and so I shall ever consider it. I have heard many men lecture, but I never heard any one lecture as did Professor Huxley. He was my very ideal of a lecturer. Distinct in utterance, with an agreeable voice, lucid as it was possible to be in exposition, with admirably chosen language, sufficiently rapid, yet never hurried, often impressive in manner, yet never otherwise than completely natural, and sometimes allowing his audience a glimpse of that rich fund of humour ever ready to well forth when occasion permitted, sometimes accompanied with an extra gleam in his bright dark eyes, sometimes expressed with a dryness and gravity of look which gave it a double zest.