In memoriam Professor Huxley / [Henry Woodward].

  • Henry Woodward
Date:
1895
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: In memoriam Professor Huxley / [Henry Woodward]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Assistant-Surgeon to H.M.S. “ Eattlesnake,” under the command of Captain Owen Stanley (brother of the late Dean Stanley), com¬ missioned to survey the intricate passage within the Barrier Eeef skirting the eastern shores of Australia, and to explore the sea lying between the northern end of that reef and New Guinea. It was the best apprenticeship to what was eventually to be the work of Huxley’s life, the solution of biological problems and the indication of their far-reaching significance. Two of his warmest friends, Darwin and Hooker, had passed through a like curriculum, the former as Naturalist to the “Beagle” on her voyage round the world in 1831, and the latter as Assistant- Surgeon on board the “ Erebus ” on her Antarctic expedition in 1839. Eventually the three stood shoulder to shoulder when the battle against the immutability of species was fought. The voyage lasted from 1847 to 1850, and was the initiation of Huxley’s scientific career. Some of the results of the studies in Natural History, for which the cruise afforded facilities, were transmitted to the Linnean and Eoyal Societies, and were in due course published in their Transactions. Eeturning to England in 1850, Mr. Huxley was, in the following year, elected a Fellow of the Eoyal Society, and in 1852 he was presented with one of the Eoyal Medals annually awarded by the Society. In 1854 he received the appointment of Professor of Natural History, including Palaeontology, in the Eoyal School of Mines and Curator of the fossil Collections in the Museum of Geology, Jermyn Street; and in the same year that of Fullerian Professor of Physiology and Comparative Anatomy to the University of ^London. In 1856 he accompanied his friend Professor Tyndall in his first visit to the glaciers of the Alps, and with him read a joint paper on Glacial Phenomena, published in the Philosophical Transactions in 1857. In 1858 he was appointed Croonian Lecturer to the Eoyal Society, when he took for his subject “The Theory of the Vertebrate Skull.” In 1859 his monograph on “The Ocean Hydrozoa, a de¬ scription of the Calycophoridee and Physophoridae observed during the voyage of H.M.S. ‘Eattlesnake,’” was published by the Eay Society. In 1860 Prof. Huxley delivered a course of lectures to working-men, in Jermyn Street, on “The Eelation of Man to the Lower Animals.” The questions arising out of this topic became the subject of warm controversy at the meeting of the British Association at Oxford between Bishop Wilberforce and Professor Huxley, and was taken up by others in that and subsequent years. The whole discussion appeared in the work entitled “ Evidence of Man’s place in Nature” (1863), and excited great popular interest both in this country and abroad. Mr. Darwin’s views on the origin of species formed Professor Huxley’s subject for his lectures to working-men in 1862, subsequently published under the title, “On our knowledge of the Causes of the Phenomena of Organic Nature.” His other lectures were on the “Elements of Comparative Anatomy” and on the “ Classification of Animals and the Vertebrate Skull.”
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