[The high pressure under which Huxley worked, and his abundant output, continued undiminished through the autumn and winter.  Indeed, he was so busy that he postponed his Lectures to Working Men in London from October to February 1871.  On October 3 he lectured in Leicester on “What is to be Learned from a Piece of Coal,” a parallel lecture to that of 1868 on “A Piece of Chalk.”  On the 17th and 24th he lectured at Birmingham on “Extinct Animals intermediate between Reptiles and Birds”—­a subject which he had made peculiarly his own by long study; and on December 29 he was at Bradford, and lectured at the Philosophical Institute upon “The Formation of Coal” ("Collected Essays” 8.).

He was also busy with two Royal Commissions; still, at whatever cost of the energy and time due to his own investigations and those additional labours by which he increased his none too abundant income, he felt it his duty, in the interests of his ideal of education, to come forward as a candidate for the newly-instituted School Board for London.  This was the practical outcome of the rising interest in education all over the country; on its working, he felt, depended momentous issues—­the fostering of the moral and physical well-being of the nation; the quickening of its intelligence and the maintenance of its commercial supremacy.  Withal, he desired to temper “book-learning” with something of the direct knowledge of nature:  on the one hand, as an admirable instrument of education, if properly applied; on the other, as preparing the way for an attitude of mind which could appreciate the reasons for the immense changes already beginning to operate in human thought.

Moreover, he possessed a considerable knowledge of the working of elementary education throughout the country, owing to his experience as examiner under the Science and Art Department, the establishment of which he describes as “a measure which came into existence unnoticed, but which will, I believe, turn out to be of more importance to the welfare of the people than many political changes over which the noise of battle has rent the air” ("Scientific Education” 1869; “Collected Essays” 3 page 131.)

Accordingly, though with health uncertain, and in the midst of exacting occupations, he felt that he ought not to stand aside at so critical a moment, and offered himself for election in the Marylebone division with a secret sense that rejection would in many ways be a great relief.

The election took place on November 29, and Huxley came out second on the poll.  He had had neither the means nor the time for a regular canvass of the electors.  He was content to address several public meetings, and leave the result to the interest he could awaken amongst his hearers.  His views were further brought before the public by the action of the editor of the “Contemporary Review,” who, before the election, “took upon himself, in what seemed to him to be the public interest,” to send to the newspapers an extract from Huxley’s article, “The School Boards:  what they can do, and what they may do,” which was to appear in the December number.