Page:Dictionary of National Biography. Sup. Vol III (1901).djvu/37



of a still imperfect knowledge of German, to read the great work of Schleiden. In the autumn of the same year he and his elder brother James obtained scholarships at the Charing Cross hospital, where Huxley first felt the influence of daily intercourse with a really able teacher. He says : 'No doubt it was very largely my own fault, but the only instruction from which I ever obtained the proper effect of education was that which I received from Mr. Wharton Jones, who was the lecturer on physiology at the Charing Cross school of medicine.... I do not know that I have ever felt so much respect for anybody as a teacher before or since.' During the next three years he must have accomplished an enormous amount of work. He distinguished himself in the ordinary subjects of professional study, but in addition to this he acquired in some way or other a remarkably thorough knowledge of comparative anatomy, and a wide acquaintance with the writings of the great biologists. In 1845 he announced his discovery of that layer of cells in the root-sheath of hair which now bears his name. Any one who will try to demonstrate the existence of this layer by the methods at Huxley's command will appreciate the power of observation shown by the discovery.

He graduated M.B. in London University in 1845, winning a gold medal for anatomy and physiology. In 1846, being qualified to practise his profession, he applied for an appointment in the royal navy. An application to the director-general, suggested by a fellow-student, was successful, and he was sent to Haslar hospital on the books of Nelson's ship Victory. Sir John Richardson [q. v.], who was Huxley's chief at Haslar, quickly recognised his qualities, and resolved to find him an appointment which should enable him to prove his worth. Accordingly, when Captain Owen Stanley asked for an assistant surgeon to be appointed to H.M.S. Rattlesnake, then about to start on a surveying cruise in the seas between Australia and the Great Barrier Reef, Huxley was recommended and accepted.

The Rattlesnake left England on 3 Dec. 1846, and was paid off at Chatham, on her return, on 9 Nov. 1850. During the voyage Huxley devoted himself chiefly to the study of animals which could not be adequately preserved, for examination at home, by any methods then in use. Accordingly the first results of his work are described in a series of memoirs on those delicate hydrozoa, tunicates, and mollusca, which float near the surface of the sea, and can be caught in abundance from the deck of a sailing vessel in calm weather. The value of these memoirs is due as much to the method of morphological analysis adopted as to the very large amount of new anatomical information they contain. The conception of a morphological type, which was then supported in England by the great influence of (Sir) Richard Owen [q. v.], may be understood from his definition of homology, which he interprets 'as signifying that essential character of a part which belongs to it in its relation to a predetermined pattern, answering to the "idea" of the archetypal world in the Platonic cosmogony, which archetype or primal pattern is the basis supporting all the modifications of such part ... in all animals possessing it' (, On the Nature of Limbs, 1849). The conception of morphological type as an 'archetypal idea,' which Owen had derived from Laurenz Oken (1779-1851), the German naturalist, and his followers, was clearly incapable of being tested by experiment, and Huxley from the first rejected it. For him, as for Von Baer and Johannes Müller, the only useful 'morphological type' was a general statement of those structural characters common to all members of a group of animals in the embryonic or the adult state. Such conceptions could be tested and corrected by observation ; and, until the 'Origin of Species' appeared, Huxley regarded any hypothesis concerning the nature of the bond between animals which exhibit the same structural plan as altogether premature.

When the Rattlesnake left 'England, the hydrozoa were commonly associated with starfishes, parasitic worms, and infusoria in Cuvier's group 'Radiata.' In 1847 Huxley sent two papers, dealing with the structure of a great division of the hydrozoa, to the Linnean Society ; in 1848 he sent to the Royal Society a memoir 'On the Affinities of the Family of the Medusæ' (Phil. Trans. 1849), and he wrote a letter to Edward Forbes [q. v.], published in 1850 (Ann. Mag. Nat. Hist. vi.) In these memoirs the morphological type common to all the hydrozoa is clearly explained, and in the letter to Edward Forbes it is shown that the same structural plan may be recognised in sea-anemones, corals, and their allies. It is pointed out that the plan common to these animals is not exhibited by the other 'Radiata,' and it is proposed to remove both sets of animals from the Radiata, regarding them as subdivisions of a separate class, 'Nematophora.' The views embodied in this suggestion were speedily accepted, and Huxley's statement of the morphological plan common to the class is now held to embody a firmly established anatomical truth.