me in full strength: it has often stood me in good stead: it has
sometimes played me sad tricks, and it has always been a danger.
But, after all, if my time were to come over again there is
nothing I would less willingly part with than my inheritance of
'mother wit.'"

From his father he thinks that he inherited little except an inborn
capacity for drawing, "a hot temper, and that amount of tenacity of
purpose which unfriendly observers sometimes call obstinacy." As it
happened, this natural gift for drawing proved of the greatest service
to him throughout his career. It is imperative that every investigator
of the anatomy of plants and animals should be able to sketch his
observations, and there is no greater aid to seeing things as they are
than the continuous attempt to reproduce them by pencil or brush.

Huxley was christened Thomas Henry, and he was unaware why these names
were chosen, but he humorously records the curious chance that his
parents should have chosen for him the "name of that particular
apostle with whom he had always felt most sympathy."

Of his childhood little is recorded. He remembers being vain of his
curls, and his mother's expressed regret that he soon lost the beauty
of early childhood. He attended for some time the school at Ealing
with which his father was associated, but he has little to say for the
training he received there. He writes:

"My regular school training was of the briefest, perhaps
fortunately: for, though my way of life has made me acquainted
with all sorts and conditions of men, from the highest to the
lowest, I deliberately affirm that the society I fell into at