Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And WorkMitchell, P. Chalmers (Peter Chalmers), Sir
Science
Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work
Mitchell, P. Chalmers (Peter Chalmers), Sir
Huxley, Thomas Henry, 1825-1895
The two other of the three great treatises for anatomical students are
the _Manual of the Anatomy of Vertebrated Animals_, published in 1871,
and the _Manual of the Anatomy of Invertebrated Animals_, published in
1877. Of these two volumes it is sufficient to say that they formed
the chief introduction to the study of animal zoölogy for many years,
and that a large number of the best-known zoölogists of the end of
this century received from them their first instruction in the
science. As text-books they have been superseded lately by larger
volumes in which there is found more space for some of the recent
advances in knowledge, especially comparative embryology, and the more
intricate knowledge of the structure of the soft parts of marine
invertebrates made possible by the newer and more successful methods
of preserving delicate tissues. Just before Huxley ceased his regular
work as a teacher at the Royal College of Science, there arrived a
series of marine embryos, beautifully preserved and prepared for
microscopic work by the zoölogists at the International Zoölogical
Station at Naples. Huxley is reported to have exclaimed at their
beauty, and to have said: "You young men cannot realise your
advantages; you have brought to you for study at your leisure in
London, creatures that I had to lash my microscope to the mast to get
a glimpse of." Huxley's books were written for students with fewer
advantages, and, naturally, laid more stress on the harder skeletal
parts and such structures as could be more easily preserved; but with
this inevitable limitation they still serve as luminous and
comprehensive guides to the subjects of which they treat. There is no
doubt but that if he had been a younger man when the new technical
methods made their appearance, he would have adopted them and their
results in his volumes. One of the first great pieces of work which
utilised methods more like those now used in all laboratories than
those employed during the greater part of Huxley's life as a teacher
was the classical investigation by Van Beneden into the changes in the
egg of Ascaris which accompany the process of fertilisation. When
Huxley read the memoir he exclaimed, "All this by the use of glacial
acetic acid--is it possible!" At once, Professor Howes relates, he
repeated the whole investigation himself, and, when satisfied,
declared that the "history of the histological investigation of the
future would be the history of its methods." Not only have the
chemical substances used in preparing tissues for examination greatly
increased since Huxley's time as an active worker, but a very
important method of investigation has come into general use. In
Huxley's time tissues or animals too large or too opaque to be
examined microscopically as whole structures were either teased by
needles or were cut with a razor by hand into comparatively thick
slices. The process of cutting, however practised the operator, was
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