scientific reputation of his great predecessor, John Hunter, by
arranging and revising for publication a large collection of precious
manuscripts containing records of dissections of animals and
observations and reflections upon numerous subjects connected with
anatomy, physiology, and natural history in general. These were
published in 1861, in two closely-printed octavo volumes, entitled
_Essays and Observations in Natural History, Anatomy, Physiology,
Psychology, and Geology, by John Hunter, being his Posthumous Papers on
those subjects_. The original manuscripts had been destroyed by Sir
Everard Home in 1823, but fortunately not before William Clift had taken
copies of the greater part of them, and it was from these copies that
the work was compiled. Its publication shows that Hunter, while occupied
with a large and anxious practice--in itself labour enough for an
ordinary man--while cultivating with a passionate energy the sciences of
physiology and pathology, while collecting and arranging a museum such
as has never been formed before or since by a single individual, had
also carefully recorded a series of dissections of different species of
animals which, as his editor justly says, “if published _seriatim_,
would not only have vied with the labours of Daubenton, as recorded in
the _Histoire Naturelle_, of Buffon, or with the _Comparative
Dissections_ of Vicq d’Azyr, which are inserted in the early volumes of
the _Encyclopédie Méthodique_ and the _Mémoires de l’Académie Royale de
France_, but would have exceeded them both together.”
In 1866 were published the first and second volumes, and in 1868 the
third volume, of Owen’s own great book on the Anatomy and Physiology of
the Vertebrates.
This is the most encyclopædic work on the subject accomplished by any
one individual since Cuvier’s _Leçons d’Anatomie Comparée_, and contains
an immense mass of information mainly based upon original observations
and dissections. It is in fact a collection of nearly all his previous
memoirs arranged in systematic order, generally in the very words in
which they were originally written, and unfortunately sometimes without
the revision which advances made in the subject by the labours of others
would have rendered desirable. Very little of the classification adopted
in this work, either the primary division of the Vertebrates into
Hæmatocrya and Hæmatotherma, or the divisions into classes and
sub-classes, has been accepted by other zoologists. The division of the
Mammalia into four sub-classes of equivalent value, upheld by Owen, not
only in this work, but in various other publications issued about the
same time (Rede Lecture, etc.), founded upon cerebral characteristics,
was especially open to criticism. Though the separation of the
Monotremes and Marsupials from all the others as a distinct group
(Lyencephala) is capable of vindication, the three other sub-classes,
Lissencephala, Gyrencephala, and Archencephala, grade so imperceptibly
into each other that their distinction as sub-classes cannot be
maintained. The proposed definition of the distinguishing characters of
the brain of Man (Archencephala) from that of other Mammals gave rise to
a somewhat acute controversy, the echoes of which reached beyond the
realms of purely scientific literature. On the other hand, the radical
distinction between the two groups of Ungulates, the odd-toed and the
even-toed, first indicated by Cuvier, when treating of the fossil forms,
was thoroughly worked out by Owen through every portion of their
organisation, and remains as a solid contribution to a rational system
of classification.
The chapter called “General Conclusions” at the end of the third volume
is devoted to a summary of his views on the principal controverted
biological questions of the day, especially in relation to the teaching
of Darwin, just then coming into great prominence. Although from the
peculiarly involved style of Owen’s writing, especially upon these
subjects, it is sometimes difficult to define his real opinions, it
appears that before the publication of the _Origin of Species_, he had
“been led to recognise species as exemplifying the continuous operation
of natural law, or secondary cause, and that not only successively but
progressively.” Darwin’s special doctrine of “natural selection,”
however, he never appreciated, and his strong opposition to it caused
him, though quite erroneously, to be looked upon by those outside the
world of science as a supporter of the old-fashioned and then more
“orthodox” view of special creation. His most distinct utterance upon
this subject is contained in the following paragraph: “So, being unable
to accept the volitional hypothesis, or that of impulse from within, or
the selective force exerted by outward circumstances, I deem an innate
tendency to deviate from parental type, operating through periods of
adequate duration, to be the most probable nature, or way of operation,
of the secondary law, whereby species have been derived one from the
other.” (_Op. cit._ vol. iii. p. 807.)
His career as a lecturer did not entirely cease with his connection with
the College of Surgeons, as, by permission of the authorities of the
Museum of Practical Geology in Jermyn Street, he gave several courses on
the fossil remains of animals, in the theatre of that institution, and
he held in the years 1859, 1860, and 1861, in conjunction with his
office at the British Museum, the Fullerian Professorship of Physiology
in the Royal Institution. On the revival of the annual lecture on Sir
Robert Rede’s foundation in the University of Cambridge, in 1859, he was
appointed to give the first, and took for his subject the Classification
of the Mammalia. He also occasionally lectured at the Royal Institution
on Friday evenings, his last appearance there being on 26th April 1861,
when he delivered the discourse, “On the Scope and Appliances of a
National Museum of Natural History,” to be presently referred to. In
April 1862 he gave four lectures on Birds at the London Institution.
While at the College of Surgeons he had been a member of a Government
Commission for inquiring into the health of the Metropolis; and
subsequently (1849) of one on Smithfield and the other meat markets, in
which he strongly advocated the entire suppression of intramural
slaughter-houses, and the concomitant evil of the passage of droves of
sheep and cattle through the streets of London. For the Great Exhibition
of 1851 he was on the Preliminary Committee of Organisation, and he
acted as chairman of the jury on raw materials, alimentary substances,
etc., and published an elaborate report on their awards. He also
delivered to the Society of Arts a lecture on “Raw Animal Products, and
their Uses in Manufacture.” Similar services were performed by him for
the Exposition Universelle of Paris in 1858.
It has been already said that Owen took scarcely any part in the details
of the administration of the British Museum, but one subject relating to
that establishment did largely engage his attention from his first
connection with it. That the accommodation afforded by the rooms devoted
to natural history in the Museum at Bloomsbury was painfully inadequate
for the purpose was evident to him as well as to every one else. Space
must be obtained somewhere, even for the proper conservation and display
of the existing collections, to say nothing of the vast additions that
must be expected if the subject were to be represented in anything like
the way in which it deserved to be in his eyes, and Owen in this respect
had very large views. The scientific public, the officers of the Museum,
and the Trustees, were much divided as to whether it would be better to
endeavour to obtain this space in the neighbourhood of the existing
Museum, or to remove a portion of the collection to a totally distinct
locality. After some apparent hesitation, Owen threw himself strongly on
the side of those who took the latter view, being the one which seemed
to him to have the best chance of leading to a successful result, and he
strongly urged upon the Government, and upon the public generally, in
annual museum returns, lectures, and pamphlets, the desirability of the
scheme. In his address as President of the Biological Section of the
British Association at the York meeting in 1881, he has given a history
of the part he took in promoting the building of the new museum at South
Kensington, including his success in enlisting the sympathy of Mr.
Gladstone, by whose powerful aid the difficulties and opposition with
which the plan was met in Parliament were mainly overcome. His earlier
views upon the subject are fully explained in a small work entitled _On
the Extent and Aims of a National Museum of Natural History_, published
in 1862, being an expansion of the lecture he gave at the Royal
Institution in the previous year. Much controversy arose about this time
as to the best principle of museum organisation, Owen adhering to the
old view of a public exhibition on a very extensive scale, while the
greater number of naturalists of the time preferred the system of
dividing the collections into a comparatively limited public exhibition,
the bulk of the specimens being kept in a manner accessible only to the
researches of advanced students. The Royal Commission on the Advancement
of Science, of which the late Duke of Devonshire was chairman,
investigated the subject fully, and reported (in 1874) in favour of the
latter view; but in the new building in the Cromwell Road there was,
unfortunately, little provision made for carrying it out in a
satisfactory manner.
As long ago as 1859, in one of his reports on the subject to the
Trustees, Owen recommended that the new museum building, “besides giving
the requisite accommodation to the several classes of natural history
objects, as they had been by authority exhibited and arranged for public
instruction and gratification, should also include a hall or exhibition
space for a distinct department, adapted to convey an elementary
knowledge of the subjects of all the divisions of natural history to the
large proportion of public visitors not specially conversant with any of
those subjects.” The same idea, in a later publication, is thus
described: “One of the most popular and instructive features in a public
collection of natural history would be an apartment devoted to the
specimens selected to show type-characters of the principal groups of
organised and crystallised forms. This would constitute an epitome of
natural history, and should convey to the eye, in the easiest way, an
elementary knowledge of the sciences.” In every modification which the
plans of the new building underwent, a hall for the purpose indicated in
the above passages formed a prominent feature, being in the later stages
of the development of the building, called, for want of a better name,
the “Index Museum.” Though Owen gave the suggestion and designed the
general plan of the hall, the arrangement of its contents was left to
his successor to carry out.
In another part of his original scheme he was less successful. The
lecture theatre, which he had throughout urged with great pertinacity as
a necessary accompaniment to a natural history museum, was, as he says
in the address referred to above, “erased from my plan, and the
elementary courses of lectures remain for future fulfilment.”
On several other important questions of museum arrangement Owen allowed
his views, even when essentially philosophical as well as practical, to
be overruled. As long ago as December 1841, he submitted to the Museum
Committee of the Royal College of Surgeons the question of incorporating
in one catalogue and system of arrangement the fossil bones of extinct
animals with the specimens of recent osteology, and shortly afterwards
laid before the Committee a report pointing out the advantages of such a
plan. Strangely enough, though receiving the formal approval of the
Council, no steps were taken to carry it out as long as he was at the
College. He returned to the question in reference to the arrangement of
the new National Museum, and although no longer advocating so complete
an incorporation of the two series, apparently in consideration of the
interests of the division into “departments” which he found in existence
there, he says, “The department of Zoology in such a museum should be so
located as to afford the easiest transit from the specimens of existing
to those of extinct animals. The geologist specially devoted to the
study of the evidence of extinct vegetation ought, in like manner, to
have means of comparing his fossils with the collections of recent
plants.”[85] Provision for such an arrangement is clearly indicated in
all the early plans for the building, in which the space for the
different subjects is allocated, but not a trace of it remained in the
final disposition of the contents of the museum, as Owen left it in
1883.
Another essential feature of Owen’s original plan, without which, he
says, “No collection of zoology can be regarded as complete,” is a
gallery of physical ethnology, the size of which he estimated (in 1862)
at 150 ft. in length by 50 ft. in width. It was to contain casts of the
entire body, coloured after life, of characteristic parts as the head
and face, skeletons of every variety arranged side by side for facility
of comparison, the brain preserved in spirit showing its characteristic
size and distinctive structures, etc. “The series of zoology,” he says,
“would lack its most important feature were the illustrations of the
physical characters of the human race to be omitted.”
An adequate exhibition of the Cetacea, both by means of stuffed
specimens and skeletons, also always formed a prominent element in his
demand for space. “Birds, shells, minerals,” he wrote, “are to be seen
in any museum; but the largest, strangest, rarest specimens of the
highest class of animals can only be studied in the galleries of a
national one.” And again: “If a national museum does not afford the
naturalist the means of comparing the Cetacea, we never shall know
anything about these most singular and anomalous animals.”
When, however, the contents of the museum were finally arranged,
nominally under his direction, physical anthropology was only
represented by a few skeletons and skulls placed in a corner of the
great gallery devoted to the osteology of the Mammalia, and the fine
series of Cetacean skeletons could only be accommodated in a most
unsuitable place for exhibition in a part of the basement not originally
destined for any such purpose. The truth is that the division of the
museum establishment into four distinct departments, each with its own
head, left the “superintendent” practically powerless, and Owen’s genius
did not lie in the direction of such a re-organisation as might have
been effected during the critical period of the removal of the
collections from Bloomsbury and their installation in the new building.
Advancing age, also, probably indisposed him to encounter the
difficulties which inevitably arise from interference with time-honoured
traditions. At length, at the close of the year 1883, being in his
eightieth year, he asked to be relieved from the responsibilities of an
office the duties of which he had practically ceased to perform.
The nine remaining years of his life were spent in peaceful retirement
at Sheen Lodge, an ideal residence for one who had such a keen enjoyment
of the charms of Nature in every form, for, though so large a portion of
his active life had been passed among dry bones, anatomical specimens,
microscopes, and books, he retained a genuine love for out-door natural
history, and the sight of the deer and other animals in the park, the
birds and insects in the garden, the trees, flowers, and varying aspects
of the sky, filled him with enthusiastic admiration. He also had his
library around him, and it is needless to say that the habit of
strenuous work never deserted him till failing memory and bodily
infirmity made it no longer possible to continue that flow of
contributions to scientific literature which had never ceased during a
period of sixty-two years, his first and last papers being dated
respectively 1826 and 1888. His wife and only child had died some time
before, but the son (who had held an appointment in the Foreign Office)
left a widow and seven children, who, coming to reside with him at
Sheen, completely relieved his latter days of the solitude in which they
would otherwise have been passed. During the autumn of 1892 his strength
gradually failed, and he died on the 18th of December, literally of old
age. In accordance with his own expressed desire, he was buried in the
churchyard of Ham, near Richmond, in the same grave with his wife, a
large and representative assemblage of men of science being present at
the funeral ceremony.
It may be thought that the prodigious amount of work that Owen did in
his special subjects would have left him no time for any other
occupations or relaxations, but this was by no means the case. He was a
great reader of poetry and romance, and, being gifted with a wonderful
memory, could repeat by heart, even in his old age, page after page of
Milton and other favourite authors. For music he had a positive passion;
in the most busy period of his life he might constantly be seen at
public concerts, listening with rapt attention, and in his earlier days
was himself no mean vocalist, and acquired considerable proficiency in
playing the violincello. He was also a neat and careful draughtsman; the
large number of anatomical sketches he left behind him testify to his
industry in this direction. His handwriting was unusually clear and
finished, considering the vast quantity of manuscript that flowed from
his pen, for he rarely resorted to dictation or any labour-saving
process. Only those who have had to clear out rooms, official or
private, which have been long occupied by him can have any idea of the
quantity of memoranda and extracts which he made with his own hand, and
most of the books he was in the habit of using were filled with notes
and comments.
Owen’s was a very remarkable personality, both physically and mentally.
He was tall but ungainly in figure, with massive head, lofty forehead,
curiously round, prominent, and expressive eyes, high cheek bones, large
mouth and projecting chin, long, lank, dark hair, and during the greater
part of his life, smooth-shaven face, and very florid complexion. Though
in his general intercourse with others usually possessed of much of the
ceremonial courtesy of the old school, and when in congenial society a
delightful companion, owing to his unfailing flow of anecdote,
considerable sense of humour, and strongly-developed faculty of
imagination, he was not only an extremely adroit controversialist, but
could say as hard things as any one of an adversary or rival. It was to
Owen’s many-sided and very complex character that the remarkably
different estimates formed of him personally by his contemporaries was
due. Unfortunately he was often engaged in controversy, a circumstance
which led to a comparative isolation in his position among men who
followed kindred pursuits, which was doubtless painful to himself as
well as to others. It was this, combined with a certain inaptitude for
ordinary business affairs, which was the cause of his never having been
called to occupy several of the distinguished official positions in
science to which his immense labours and brilliant talents would
otherwise have fairly entitled him. Over the British Association he
presided at the meeting at Leeds in 1858, and he had his full share of
those honours and dignities to which a scientific man can aspire which
involve no corresponding duties or responsibilities. He was made a C.B.
in 1873, and a K.C.B. on his retirement from the Museum in 1884. He
received the Prussian Order “Pour le Mérite” in 1851, the Cross of the
French Legion of Honour in 1855, and was also decorated by the King of
Italy with the Order of St. Maurice and St. Lazarus, and by the Emperor
of Brazil with the Order of the Rose. He was chosen one of the eight
foreign Associates of the Institute of France in 1859. The Universities
of Oxford, Cambridge, and Dublin conferred upon him their honorary
degrees, and he was an honorary or corresponding member of nearly every
important scientific society in the world. The Geological Society
presented him with the Wollaston Medal in 1838, and the Royal College of
Surgeons with its Honorary Gold Medal in 1883. He was the first to
receive the gold medal established by the Linnean Society at the
centenary meeting of that body in 1888. The Royal Society, of which he
became a Fellow in December 1834, and on the Council of which he served
for five separate periods, awarded him one of the Royal Medals in 1846,
and the Copley Medal in 1851.
XXIII
REMINISCENCES OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY[86]
There is no intention in this paper of giving either a biographical
notice of Professor Huxley or an estimate of his position in science,
philosophy, or literature. Both have been done over and over again in
numerous journals and magazines that have appeared since his death. The
main facts of his career, and his great contributions to human
knowledge, must be perfectly familiar to the readers of this _Review_. I
have, however, in response to an appeal from the Editor, put down a few
personal reminiscences, gathered during a friendship of nearly forty
years, which may throw some additional light upon the character and
private life of one in whom all English-speaking people must take a deep
interest. In doing this I fear I have been obliged to introduce myself
to the notice of the reader more frequently than I should wish, but this
seems inevitable in an article of this nature, and I trust will be
forgiven for the sake of the main subject.
When Huxley returned to London from his four years’ surveying cruise in
H.M.S. _Rattlesnake_, under the command of Captain Owen Stanley, R.N.,
one of the first men of kindred pursuits who took him by the hand was
George Busk, then surgeon to the Seaman’s Hospital, the _Dreadnought_,
lying in the Thames off Greenwich. About this time Busk removed from
Greenwich to Harley Street, and although doing some practice as a
surgeon, and even attaining to the position of President of the Royal
College of Surgeons, his main occupation and chief pleasure were in
purely scientific pursuits, and his great interest in and familiarity
with microscopic manipulation, especially as applied to the structure of
lowly organised animal forms--then rather in its infancy--was a strong
bond of sympathy with Huxley. In 1852-54 they translated and edited
jointly Kölliker’s _Manual of Human Histology_, published by the
Sydenham Society. This fact shows that Huxley had already made himself
proficient in the German language, as he had also, while on board the
_Rattlesnake_, taught himself Italian, with the main object of being
able to read Dante in the original, so wide were his interests and
sympathies.