HUXLEI"S SCIENTIFIC PAPERS.
The Scientific Memoirs of Thomas Henry Huxley. Vol. IV. (Mac- millan and Co. 30s. net.)—The handsome edition of the late Pro- fessor Huxley's scientific papers which has been produced by the pious care of Sir Michael Foster and Professor Ray Lankester is now completed by the appearance of the fourth and last volume, which covers the period from 1874 to 1894. It includes one or two things that were already accessible to the general reader, and others—such as the very interesting essay on William Harvey and the address on "The Rise and Progress of Palaeontology "- which deserve to be so made accessible. We venture to repeat our hope that the editors will see their way to include all such papers of general interest in one or two extra volumes of Huxley's essays, of which nino volumes have so far appeared in the " Eversley Series." They have reprinted some of the already published essays in these volumes on principles of selection that are beyond our comprehension : let them make amends by returning the compliment to the general reader, who will scarcely find room for these large and imposing tomes in his library. Yet he will be sorry to lose the entertaining paper on "Oysters and the Oyster Question," for instance, with its lucid explanation of how, "when the sapid and slippery morsel—which is and is gone, like a flash of gustatory summer lightning—glides along the palate, few people imagine that they are swallowing a piece of machinery (and going machinery too) greatly more complicated than a watch." He will be sorry, also, not to possess the admirable paper on Harvey, with its fine plea on behalf of the so-called " vivi- sectionist," and its inquiry "whether it is quite so certain as some seem to believe that the public opinion of the England of Harvey's day—that time when Englishmen could hurl back a world arrayed in arms against them because they feared neither to suffer nor to inflict pain and death in a good cause ; that age within which Shakespeare and Milton, Hobbes and Locke, Harvey and Newton, Drake and Raleigh, Cromwell and Strafford, embodied the powers of our race for good and evil in a fashion which has had no parallel before or since—was absolutely contemptible when set against that of this present enlightened and softly nurtured, not to say sentimental, age." Now that this great undertaking is completed, perhaps the editors will consider the desirability of acceding to our plea.
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