In 1854 Huxley's uncomfortable period of probation came to an end. Edward Forbes, who held the posts of Palæontologist to the Geological Survey, and Lecturer on General Natural History at the Metropolitan School of Science Applied to Mining and the Arts, vacated these on his appointment to the Chair of Natural History in the University of Edinburgh, and Sir H. De La Beche, the then Director-General of the Geological Survey, offered both the posts to Huxley--who in June and July of that year had given lectures at the school in place of Forbes. Huxley says himself: "I refused the former point-blank, and accepted the latter only provisionally, telling Sir Henry that I did not care for fossils, and that I should give up natural history as soon as I could get a physiological post. But I held the office for thirty-one years, and a large part of my work has been palæontological." The salary of the post of Lecturer on Natural History was scanty, but De La Beche, who evidently recognised Huxley's genius, and was anxious to have him attached even against his will to palæontological work, created a place for him as Naturalist to the Geological Survey, by which a more suitable income was found for him. His official duties were at first in the Geological Museum of the Survey, but were distinguished from those of the special Palæontologist, Mr. Harvey. His income was now assured, and for the rest of his life, until towards its close, when he retired to Eastbourne, he lived the ordinary life of a professional man of science in London. He was now able to marry, and on July 21, 1855, he was married to a lady whom he had met in Sydney in 1847, and whom he had not seen since the _Rattlesnake_ left Sydney finally in the beginning of May, 1850. During the years 1856, 1857, and 1858, he held the post of Fullerian Professor of Physiology in the Royal Institution, choosing as the title of his first two courses of lectures Physiology and Comparative Anatomy, as he still cherished the idea of being in the first place a physiologist. [Illustration: THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY, 1857 Reproduced by permission from _Natural Science_, vol. vii., No. 42]