H17XLE Y'S SCIENTIFIC PAPERS.
The Scientific Memoirs of T. H. Huxley. Edited by Professor Sir Michael Foster and by Professor E. Ray Lankester. Vol. III. (Macmillan and Co. 30s. net.)—The third volume of Huxley's hitherto uncollected papers, which we owe to the loving care of two of his old friends, carries us from 1864 to 1872. These papers are, most of them, too purely technical to invite attention in these columns, although to the student they contain countless evidences of that passion for form which made of their author, not only one of the most brilliant scientific writers who ever lived, but a kind of mechanical engineer whose material was flesh and blood instead of steel and iron. His scientific interests, as Professor lankester has well put it elsewhere, were largely modified by his own temperament "as an artist, a born lover of form, is character which others recognise in him, though he does not himself set it down in his analysis." That is well illustrated in such an admirable little monograph as the paper on that old- world saurian reptile known as " hyperodapedon," which is reprinted in this volume. But to the general reader the papers of most interest are those which deal with less abArusely technical questions. Of these we find rather fewer than in previous volumes, but we must draw attention to the excellent address which Huxley delivered in 1869 as President of the London Geelogical Society, in which he took account of the conflict which was then said to exist between the teaching of geologists as to the duration of the earth and the new views which physics had imported into this interesting discussion under the xgis of the present Lord Kelvin. That distinguished physicist had gone so far as to assert: "British popular geo:ogy at the present time is in direct opposition to ' the principles of natural philosophy." Huxley—who was ever ready for a fight—pounced on this opportunity of breaking a lance, in all courtesy and kindness, with the most eminent of mathematical students of physics, and succeeded in showing that, whatever might be meant by "popular geology," no such charge as Thomson brought could be substantiated against the acknowledged leaders in the science. "The critical examination of the grounds upon which the very grave charge of opposition to the principles of natural philosophy has been brought against us rather shows that we have exercised a wise discrimination in declining to meddle with our foundations at the bidding of the first passer-by who fancies our house is not so well built as it might be." Another paper of great interest is the address which Huxley delivered as President of the British Association at Liverpool in 1870. In this he dealt with the question of "spontaneous generation," or—to use the term which he introduced—the doctrine of Biogenesis, in connection with the germ-theory which was Olen, in the hands of Pasteur and Lister, bringing forth such splendid fruit. The conclusion of this address is so good and so characteristic that we should like to quote it in full, did space permit; but we must, send our readers to the original for the full demonstration of Huxley's constant theme : "Thus man- kind will have one more admonition that • the people perish for lack of knowledge ' ; and thst the alleviation of the miseries, and the promotion of the welftre, of men must be sought, by those who will not lose their pains, in that diligent, patient, loving study of all the multitudinous aspects of Nature, the results a which constitute exact knowledge, or Science." We may repeat the hope already expressed in these columns that when this issue of Huxley's scientific papers is completed it will be found possible to gather such of them as appeal, like this address, to a wider audience, into a tenth volume of his "Colleted Essays."
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