Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 48.djvu/365

Rh principally on the position and construction of the bones of the palate and beak—and the stir which that radical departure in classification brought out had not yet subsided. Prof. Parker was still largely engaged in proving his case, and was naturally, to use an expression that is less elegant than determining, full of it. The overjoyful manner in which he pointed out a confirmatory character here and there, or an exception to the rule elsewhere, kindled a glowing enthusiasm within the listener to follow in the line of the master, and a desire to make immediate friends with basi-sphenoid and pterygoid bones. Drawer after drawer of neatly prepared bird skulls, colored in correspondence so that identical or homologous parts could be immediately detected, were pulled out and hastily scanned over; but the explanations that were given, whatever they might have been, were liberally sprinkled with admiration for the genius of Huxley—who first broke into the method which Parker so successfully elaborated—a second to whom was not to be found in all Britain. I shall not easily forget the ocular gleam of pleasure, perhaps even delight, with which Prof. Parker announced dissent on certain anatomical points from the opinions of his friend and colaborer. The following very graceful tribute to the clearness of Prof. Huxley's expositions appears in this author's article on Birds, contributed to the ninth edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica (page 717): "The writer will often use the very words of Prof. Huxley, despairing as he does of coming near that excellent writer either in condensation or order."

Huxley, as is well known, was a master hand in the construction of the English language. For elegance and force of diction he had no superior—perhaps not even an equal—among the writers of his day, and there are few purely literary men whose productions maintain so uniformly a high quality of excellence. In borrowing from the decorative side of language, he never allowed the embellishment of phrases to interfere with the clear statement of what he had to convey either by word of mouth or of pen, or to in any way cloud his meaning. Friends and foes thus knew his position precisely, and he was always taken on his own recognizance. A strict adherence to the sequence of truth, fact, and a logical deduction from facts, was his maxim, and it was this that assured his ground for battle, and carried him triumphantly through nearly all his combats. As has before been remarked, Huxley took little stock in brain-stuffing, yet it can in no way be complained of that his own brain was "of the empty kind." The range of topics that his conversation touched was almost bewildering, yet so discreetly was his knowledge dispensed that oftentimes one assumed that he was making an inquiry, when, in fact, he was giving the answer to it. Well do I recall a meeting on Brompton