the book being
a series of dissections prepared by Mr. Charles Robertson, Rolleston's
laboratory assistant, for the great International Exhibition of 1861.
The authorities of Huxley's students were to be found in nature
itself. The green scum from the nearest gutter, a handful of weed from
a pond, a bean-plant, some fresh-water mud, a frog, and a pigeon were
the ultimate authorities of his course. His students were taught how
to observe them, and how to draw and record their observations.
However familiar the objects, each student had to verify every fact
afresh for himself. The business of the teacher was explanation of the
methods of verification, insistence on the accomplishment of
verification. It was a training in the immemorial attitude of the
scientific mind, codified by Huxley and made an integral part in
national education.

As a matter of fact it was comparatively late in his life as a teacher
that Huxley had complete opportunity for putting into practice his
scheme for the laboratory teaching of biology. In 1854 there was no
laboratory attached to the Natural History Department of the School of
Mines. Lectures alone were given, and the only opportunity the student
had of any practical acquaintance with the facts was in a short
interview with the professor at the lecture table after the lecture.
This condition continued practically to 1872. But a few years before
that Huxley and his colleagues got up a kind of pronunciamento
deploring the existing state of affairs. In his evidence before the
Royal Commission of 1870 Huxley said: "There is a complete want in the
School of Mines, as it now exists, of any means of teaching several of
the subjects practically. For example, I am set there to teach natural
history without a biological laboratory and without the means of
shewing a single dissection." Against strong internal opposition and
at considerable pecuniary loss Huxley and some of his colleagues
succeeded, in 1872, in getting the School of Mines transferred to
South Kensington, where it became the Royal College of Science. For
the first course of instruction given in the new buildings, Huxley
obtained the aid of Prof. M. Foster, Prof. Rutherford, and Prof. Ray
Lankester. The laboratory course originated by Huxley and shaped by
him with these three distinguished assistants became the model of the
regular courses given subsequently, and, with various slight
modifications, has since been adopted almost universa