THREE SCIENTIFIC BOOKS.
The Scientific Memoirs of Thomas Henry Huxley. Vol. IL (Macmillan anti Co. 30s. net.)—The second volume of Huxley's technical papers, which are being given to the world by the pious care of Sir Michael Foster and Mr. Ray Lankester, deals with a very interesting period both in their author's career and in the intellectual history of the century. The date of the memoirs now published range from 1857 to 1864, and so they cover the most lively period of the controversy which was excited by Darwin's famous book on "The Origin of Species." The greater lumber of these papers are too technical to be dis- cussed in our columns, though they will be welcomed by many besides students of palmontology and zoology, as testimony to a side of Huxley's work which was unduly obscured by his particular eminence as a populariser. We prefer to point out that there are many passages in these papers so interesting that it is a great pity that they should remain buried in the pages of a book that can seldom find its way into the hands of the average cultivated reader. We would specially draw attention to the conclusion of the Friday evening discourse at the Royal Institution in which Huxley gave in his public adherence to the Darwinian theory and defined the duty of the scientific mind towards hypotheses which involved the question of man's pedigree, in language as striking as any he ever used. We hope that, when the four volumes of "Scientific Memoirs" are completed, it will be found possible to publish a selection from them which the general reader may place beside the nine volumes of Huxley's "Collected Essays."
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