Professor Huxley opened the last day of the session with an account of his recent observations on the development of the Columella auris in Amphibia. (He described it as an outgrowth of the periotic capsule, and therefore unconnected with any visceral arch.)...

In the absence of Mr. Parker there was no one competent to criticise the paper from personal knowledge; but a word dropped as to the many changes in the accepted homologies of the ossicula auditus, elicited a masterly and characteristic exposition of the series of new facts, and the modifications of the theory they have led to, from Reichert’s first observations down to the present time.  The embryonic structures grew and shaped themselves on the board, and shifted their relations in accordance with the views of successive observers, until a graphic epitome of the progress of knowledge on the subject was completed.

He and Parker indeed (to whom he signs himself, “Ever yours amphibially”) had been busy, not only throughout 1874, but for several years earlier, examining the development of the Amphibia, with a particular view to the whole theory of the vertebrate skull, for which he had done similar work in 1857 and 1858.  Thus on May 4, 1870, he writes to Parker:—­]

I read all the most important part of your Frog-paper last night, and a grand piece of work it is—­more important, I think, in all its bearings than anything you have done yet.

From which premisses I am going to draw a conclusion which you do not expect, namely, that the paper must by no manner of means go into the Royal Society in its present shape.  And for the reasons following:—­

In the first place, the style is ultra-Parkerian.  From a literary point of view, my dear friend, you remind me of nothing so much as a dog going home.  He has a goal before him which he will certainly reach sooner or later, but first he is on this side the road, and now on that; anon, he stops to scratch at an ancient rat-hole, or maybe he catches sight of another dog, a quarter of a mile behind, and bolts off to have a friendly, or inimical sniff.  In fact, his course is...(here a tangled maze is drawn) not —.  In the second place, you must begin with an earlier stage...That is the logical starting-point of the whole affair.

Will you come and dine at 6 on Saturday, and talk over the whole business?

If you have drawings of earlier stages you might bring them.  I suspect that what is wanted might be supplied in plenty of time to get the paper in.

[In 1874 he re-dissects the skull of Axolotl to clear up the question as to the existence of the] “ventral head or pedicle” [which Parker failed to observe:] “If you disbelieve in that pedicle again, I shall be guilty of an act of personal violence.” [Later,] “I am benevolent to all the world, being possessed of a dozen live axolotls and four or five big dead mesobranchs.  Moreover, I am going to get endless Frogs and Toads by judicious exchange with Gunther. [Dr. A.C.L.G.  Gunther, of the British Museum, where he was appointed Keeper of the Department of Zoology in 1875.] We will work up the Amphibia as they have not been done since they were crea—­ I mean evolved.”