for the degree of M.B. at the University of London, and took honours in physiology. Having passed the requisite examination, he was, in 1846, appointed assistant-surgeon to H.M.S. Victory, for service at Haslar Hospital. His next appointment was as assistant-surgeon to H.M.S. Rattlesnake, and he spent the greater part of the time, from 1847 to 1850, off the eastern and northern coasts of Australia. Some of the results of the studies in natural history, for which this cruise afforded facilities, appeared in various memoirs communicated to the Linnean and Royal Societies, and in a work entitled The Oceanic Hydrozoa; a Description of the Calycophoride and Physophoridæ observed during the Voyage of H.M.S. Rattlesnake (1859).

Mr. Huxley returned to England in 1850, and in the following year he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. In 1852, one of the Royal medals was awarded to him. In 1855, he was appointed Professor of Natural History at the Royal School of Mines in Jermyn-street, and, in the same year, Fullerian Professor of Physiology to the Royal Institution, and Examiner in Physiology and Comparative Anatomy to the University of London. In 1858, he was appointed Croonian Lecturer to the Royal Society, when he chose for his subject The Theory of the Vertebrate Skull. When, in 1860, it became Professor Huxley's duty to give one of the courses of lectures to the working men in Jermyn Street, he selected for his subject The Relation of Man to the Lower Animals. The questions arising out of this topic became the subject of warm controversy at the meeting of the British Association in that, and subsequent years. A summary of the whole discussion was given in the work entitled Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature, 1863, and excited great popular interest both in this country and abroad. Mr. Darwin's views on the origin of species, were the subject of Professor Huxley's lectures to working men in 1862, which have been

published under the title of Lectures on Our Knowledge of the Causes of the Phenomena of Organic Nature. He also delivered lectures on the Elements of Comparative Anatomy and on the Classification of Animals and the Vertebrate Skull. In 1862, in consequence of the absence of the President, it devolved upon Mr. Huxley, who was then one of the secretaries of the Geological Society, to deliver the annual address to the Geological Society, and as President of Section D, at the meeting of the British Association at Cambridge, he gave an address on the Condition and Prospects of Biological Science. He was elected Professor of Comparative Anatomy to the Royal College of Surgeons in 1863, and held that office for seven years. He became President of the Geological and Ethnological Societies in 1869 and 1870, and presided over the meeting of the British Association held at Liverpool in 1870. Professor Huxley's name came prominently before the general public in connection with the London School Board, to which he was elected in 1870. He took a very active part in the deliberations of that body, having rendered himself particularly conspicuous by his opposition to denominational teaching and by his fierce denunciation, in 1871, of the doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church. Professor Huxley was compelled by ill-health to retire from the Board in Jan. 1872. He was elected Lord Rector of Aberdeen University for three years Dec. 14, 1872, and installed Feb. 27, 1874. In 1873, he was elected Secretary of the Royal Society. During Professor Wyville Thompson's absence with the Challenger expedition, Professor Huxley acted as his substitute as Professor of Natural History at the University of Edinburgh, in the summer sessions of 1875 and 1876. In the latter year he received the Wollaston medal of the Geological Society. He received the honorary degree of M.D. from the University of Breslau, M.D. from the University of Wurzburg, LL.D. from the Universities of

Edinburgh, Dublin (1878), and Cambridge (1879); D.C.L. from the University of Oxford (1885), and he was elected a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1884. He was a foreign and corresponding member of the Academies of Brussels, Berlin, Gottingen, Haarlem, Lisbon, Lynæi (Rome), Munich, St. Petersburg, Philadelphia, Stockholm; of the Belgian Academy of Medicine, of the Royal Irish Academy, the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and the Cambridge Philosophical Society. He was a Knight of the Pale Star of Sweden, a purely scientific distinction; a Fellow of Eton College, and a member of the governing body of that School.

Mr. Huxley served on many Government and Royal Commissions relating to fisheries, and to science, contagious diseases, vivisection, the Scottish Universities, and other matters. In 1881, he was appointed Inspector of Salmon Fisheries, at first in conjunction with Mr. Spencer Walpole, but afterwards alone. In 1885 he was compelled by ill health to resign this, and all his other public offices, but he retained his connection with the Normal School of Science and Royal School of Mines, as Dean and honorary Professor of Biology, at the request of the Lord President. In June 1879, the French Academy of Sciences elected Professor Huxley a corresponding member in the section of anatomy and zoology, in the place of the late eminent naturalist, Baer. On July 5, 1883, he was chosen President of the Royal Society, in place of Mr. Spottiswoode; and in the same year he was elected by the Council of the United States National Academy as one of their foreign members. He delivered the Rede Lecture at Cambridge, June 12, 1883, the subject being The Origin of the Existing Forms of Animal Life; Construction or Evolution." Professor Huxley is well known as a writer on natural science, being the author of numerous papers published in the Transactions and Journals of the Royal, the Linnean, the

Geological, and the Zoological Societies, and in the memoirs of the Geological Survey of Great Britain, and many other important works. He died in 1897.

1 Quoted from Men of the Times, pp. 568, 569, 570, by Thomas Humphrey Ward.

CHAPTER XV.

Some Old Ealing Homes.

Long Popularity of Ealing as a Place of Residence.-Mrs. Delaney and Ealing.-Elm Grove.-Its Owners.-Fordhook and its Memories. --Fielding.

REWER, in his Beauties of England and Wales, published in 1816, introduces Ealing as a parish ornamented by many handsome mansions." At two different periods it was the home of Royalty, and many of its residents have been men of eminence. The picturesque neighbourhood, its beauty, the fine air, plentiful water supply-we have said that Norden describes Gunnersbury as "well syctuate for wood, ayre, and water"-open spaces, and general attractiveness, together with its nearness to the Metropolis, no doubt, influenced those who built for themselves in bygone days, but other considerations would have weight with the landed gentry in the time of Elizabeth and later, until after Charles II came to the throne.

In view of the ever-increasing magnitude of the London of to-day, it is infinitely curious to recall the anxiety of earlier reigns to prevent the over-crowding of the capital. Elizabeth and James, in turn, commanded that “persons of livelihood and means should reside in their counties, and

1 Speculum Brittaniæ.