preserved at the Huxley Laboratory at South Kensington a quantity of unpublished and unfinished work which, in detail, often anticipates the work of subsequent investigators, and which, for the most part, represents fresh studies of special groups of animals to be used in a general classification such as was suggested in his paper “On the Application of the Laws of Evolution to the arrangement of the Vertebrata, and more particularly of the Mammalia” (1880)—­“the most masterly,” remarks Professor Howes, “of his scientific theses; the only expression which he gave to the world of the interaction of a series of revolutionary ideas and conceptions (begotten of the labours of his closing years as a working zoologist) which were at the period assuming shape in his mind.  They have done more than all else of their period to rationalize the application of our knowledge of the Vertebrata, and have now left their mark for all time on the history of progress, as embodied in our classificatory systems.”  But neither this great work nor the other special monographs still in hand reached completion.  His health broke down; he could no longer stoop over the microscope, and had perforce to abandon zoological work before he was sixty.

A remark made by Huxley about others is very true of himself—­that what matters most is not the microscope, but the man behind it; not the objects seen, but the interpretation of them and their relationships.  The outward and the inward eye had the same quickness, the same highly developed sense of form and relationship, backed by a store of living knowledge; so well organized that it could respond at once to any suggestion which would throw light on undiscovered affinities and provide a true base for classification.

While much of his bookwork and writing was done at home, his later anatomical work was done at his laboratory.  As official engagements multiplied, his time was much broken into; but he snatched every available moment, often dashing down to South Kensington in a cab for a half-hour of work between two official meetings.  His absorption in his studies was intense—­as at one time he signs himself to his fellow-worker, W. K. Parker, “Ever yours amphibially,” so Jeffery Parker, his demonstrator, who tells the story, came to him with a question about the brain of the codfish at a time when he was deep in the investigation of some invertebrate group.  “Codfish?” he replied; “that’s a vertebrate, isn’t it?  Ask me a fortnight hence, and I’ll consider it.”

One more note concerning his method of work.  His love of visualizing his problems regularly led him to make charts to show geographically, say, the distribution of certain forms of life over the globe, or to illustrate points of history—­such, for example, as a coloured map of the Aegean, with fifty-mile circles drawn from the centre of the Cyclades to illustrate the range of Greek civilization as it spread over the shores of Asia and Europe.  And