and so forth were crowded into inconvenient side rooms.  The teachers were not specialists, devoting their whole attention to particular branches of science, but were doctors engaged in practice, who, in addition to their private duties and their work at the hospital, each undertook to lecture upon a special scientific subject.  Huxley came specially under the influence of Mr. Wharton Jones, who had begun to teach physiology at the hospital a year before.  Mr. Jones throughout his life was engaged in professional work, his specialty being ophthalmic surgery, but he was a devoted student of anatomy and physiology, and made several classical contributions to scientific knowledge, his best-known discoveries relating to blood corpuscles and to the nature of the mammalian egg-cell.  But perhaps his greatest claim to fame is that it was he who first imbued Huxley with a love for anatomical science and with a knowledge of the methods of investigation.  At the end of his first session, in 1843, Huxley received the first prize in the senior physiology class, while his brother got a “good conduct” prize.  Of Wharton Jones Huxley writes: 

“The extent and precision of his knowledge impressed me greatly, and the severe exactness of his method of lecturing was quite to my taste.  I do not know that I have ever felt so much respect for anybody as a teacher before or since.  I worked hard to obtain his approbation, and he was extremely kind and helpful to the youngster who, I am afraid, took up more of his time than he had any right to do.  It was he who suggested the publication of my first scientific paper—­a very little one—­in the Medical Gazette of 1845, and most kindly corrected the literary faults which abounded in it short as it was.  For at that time, and for many years afterwards, I detested the trouble of writing and would take no pains over it.”

This little paper, although Huxley deprecates it, was remarkable as the work of so young an investigator.  In it he demonstrated the existence of a hitherto unrecognised layer in the inner root-sheath of hairs, a layer that has been known since as Huxley’s layer.

There is no record in the minutes of the hospital school that Huxley gained any other school prizes.  His name reappears only in formal applications at the beginning of each session for the renewal of his free scholarship.  In this respect he is in marked contrast to his fellow-student, afterwards Sir Joseph Fayrer, who appears to have taken almost every prize open to him.  On the other hand, his attainments in anatomy and physiology brought him distinction in a wider field than the hospital school, for he obtained, in the “honours” division of the first examination for the degree of Bachelor of Medicine at the University of London, the second place with a medal.  And it is certain that he was far from neglecting his strictly professional work, although, no doubt, he devoted much time to reading and research in pure science, for in the winter of 1845-46, having completed his course at the hospital, he was prepared to offer himself at the examination for the membership of the Royal College of Surgeons; but, being as yet under twenty-one years of age, could not be admitted as a candidate.