Huxley also made minor alterations in Mr. Sclater’s scheme by forming an additional circumpolar region for the Northern Hemisphere, and by elevating New Zealand into a separate region, distinct from Australia.  On these points there is a balance of opinion against his views.

Before leaving the subject of Huxley’s contributions to vertebrate anatomy, the actual details of which would occupy far too much space, it is necessary to mention the great importance to zooelogy of the new terms and new ideas he introduced into classification.  His mind was, above all things, orderly and comprehensive, and while, in innumerable minute points, from the structure of the palate of birds to the structure of the roots of human hair (actually the subject of Huxley’s first published contribution to scientific knowledge), he added to the number of known facts, he did even more important work in co-ordinating and grouping together the known body of facts.  To him are due not only the names, but the idea, that the mammalian animals fall into three grades of ascending complexity of organisation:  the reptile-like Prototheria, which lay large eggs, and which have many other reptilian characters; the Metatheria, or marsupial animals; the Eutheria, or higher animals, which include all the common animals from the mole or rabbit up to man.  In a similar fashion, he grouped the vertebrates into three divisions, and named them:  Ichthyopsida, which include the fish and Amphibia, creatures in which the aquatic habit dominates the life history and the anatomical structure; Sauropsida, including birds and reptiles, on the close connection between which he threw so much light; Mammalia.

CHAPTER IX

MAN AND THE APES

     Objections to Zooelogical Discussion of Man’s Place—­Owen’s
     Prudence—­Huxley’s Determination to Speak out—­Account of his
     Treatment of Man’s Place in Nature—­Additions Made by More
     Recent Work.

Even before the publication of The Origin of Species there was a considerable nervousness in the minds of the more orthodox as to discussions on the position of the human species in zooelogical classification.  Men of the broadest minds, such as Lyell, who himself had suffered considerably from outside interference with the scientific right to publish scientific conclusions, was strongly opposed to anything that seemed to tend towards breaking down the barrier between man and the lower creatures.  Sir William Lawrence, a very distinguished and able man, had been criticised with the greatest severity, and had been nearly ostracised, for a very mild little book On Man; and Huxley tells us that the electors to the Chair of a Scotch University had refused to invite a distinguished man, to whom the post would have been acceptable, because he had advocated the view that there were several species of man.  The court political leaders,