PROFESSOR HUXLEY.
Born 1825.
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T is, unfortunately, impossible to obtain a portrait of Professor Huxley in the days when he was not yet a professor—when he was catching
sticklebacks and chasing butterflies at his father's school at Ealing—for at thirty-one, the age at which his earliest photograph was taken, he was already a professor of two sciences—of Natural History at the Royal School of Mines, and of Physiology at the Royal Institute. As assistant-surgeon to H.M.S. Rattlesnake he had spent three years in studying natural history off the Australian coasts, and had written out the record of his observations in the earliest of his books. The Admiralty refused to pay a penny of the publishing expenses; the young assistant-surgeon's salary was seven-and-sixpence a day; and the volume only saw the light some five years later, when it was issued by the Ray Society. But, from the days of his first fight with fortune, Professor Huxley's fame rose steadily, and by the time at which our second portrait shows him he had been President of the British Association, and had developed that limpidity of style and strength of logic which makes him both the most redoubtable antagonist in the literary arena, and the most popular exponent of the discoveries of science. Professor Huxley's health, never of the very best, has latterly compelled him to withdraw entirely from the active duties of the many posts which he has held; but the magazine articles which he occasionally puts forth show all his early faculties as strong as ever.
For the above interesting early photograph we are indebted to the kindness of Professor and Mrs. Huxley.
