hitherto remained, and many of which, perhaps, may forever remain, hidden. The same method of reasoning which enables us, when furnished with a fragment of an extinct animal, to prophesy the character which the whole organism exhibited, will, sooner or later, enable us, when we know a few of the later terms of a genealogical series, to predict the nature of the earlier terms.

In no very distant future, the method of Zadig, applied to a greater body of facts than the present generation is fortunate enough to handle, will enable the biologist to reconstruct the scheme of life from its beginning, and to speak as confidently of the character of long extinct living beings, no trace of which has been preserved, as Zadig did of the queen's spaniel and the king's horse. Let us hope that they may be better rewarded for their toil and their sagacity than was the Babylonian philosopher; for perhaps, by that time, the magi also may be reckoned among the members of a forgotten Fauna, extinguished in the struggle for existence against their great rival, common sense.

ΠΙ

A LOBSTER

[This lecture was delivered at the South Kensington Museum in 1861; and it was intended especially for teachers. It is the earliest of Huxley's addresses to popular audiences; and it was delivered when he was not yet thirty years of age. It is an exemplification of the result of the method of Zadig, when this is applied by a man of science who is also a man of letters, who possesses "trained and organized common sense" and also the interpreting imagination which enabled him to arrive at the truth from out of a chaos of mere facts.

It is an alluring introduction to the study of Zoology, just as the later and companion lecture "On a Piece of Chalk" is an equally alluring introduction to the study of Geology. It reveals Huxley's early mastery of the art of exposition. It displays his ability to give a carefully articulated skeleton to what is seemingly only a simple talk on a simple subject. It is logically put together with a central theme always kept in mind and continually supported by a variety of illuminating illustrations.]

III

A LOBSTER

OR THE STUDY OF ZOOLOGY

[1861]

NATURAL HISTORY is the name familiarly applied to the study of the properties of such natural bodies as minerals, plants, and animals; the sciences which embody the knowledge man has acquired upon these subjects are commonly termed Natural Sciences, in contradistinction to other so-called "physical" sciences; and those who devote themselves especially to the pursuit of such sciences have been and are commonly termed "Naturalists."

Linnæus was a naturalist in this wide sense, and his "Systema Natura" was a work upon natural history, in the broadest acceptation of the term; in it, that great methodizing spirit embodied all that was known in his time of the distinctive characters of minerals, animals, and plants. But the enormous stimulus which Linnæus gave to the investigation of nature soon rendered it impossible that any one man should write another "Systema Naturæ," and extremely difficult for any one to become even a naturalist such as Linnæus was.

Great as have been the advances made by all the three