The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1876-12-23 00:00:00

AN ORItNTAL VIEW OF THE
ENGLISH.

"There is at present," says a Bombay paper, "a
notable Mahomedan in Bombay. He is the Nawab
Nubbee Brix Khan Bahadoor Delawar Jung, and with
is son he is P:a route from Delhi to Mecca. The I
iiaysab is celebrated for having during the mutiny
sent a messenger from Delhi to Mr. Greathed, Com-
missioner of Meerut, who was on the Ridge, to
inform him of the rebellion within the city, which
messenger was murdered. When Delhi was
captured there was accidently found in the palace a
petition from this Mahomedon gentleman asking the
tug not to perthit the slaughter of the European
prismers, women and children. In consequence
of the services rendered by Nubbee Brix Khan he
has received pre§ents and consideration from the
Government. In 1867 be published a pamphlet
entitled 'Adal ahal• Warang,' or 'Justice of the British
people.' It is a panegyric on the Queen, written in all
the tx %ggerated style of Orientalism. He tells us that
if Plato and Aristotle had lived under Queen Victoria
they would have been only too glad to become the I
pupil of any of her subjects, even of the meanest
gleaner.' The great good which the British have
done the country, he says, is found in the adminis-
tration of law and justice to all alike, the educa-
tion of the people, the introduction of printing,
the establishtvent of hospiLals, dispensaries, and
madhouses, the importation of fine clothing, the
making of roads and canals, the introduction of photo-
graphy, the abolition of suttee, the formation of a
police, the establishment of a post office and of the
telegraph, the invention of steamboats, the construction
of railways, and reveral other things. He naively
says that the newly-married girl, when taken away
from her parents, pines in grief an acc)unt of the
separation,' but that God in pity to them has intro-
dueed the railway into India, by means of which their
aniiety of mind is done away with.' There are many
other advantages pointed out in the pamphlet, and a
striking contrast is drawn between the British Raj and
the oppression and tyranny which existed at Delhi for
generations. It is said that this veteran Mahomedan
in a centenarian.":

411
1-1) Wilt) KNows.--.What sized teqkviriad
to drown care 40-I'und's abtasack.

PROFESSOR HUXLEY ON BIOLOGY.

The theatre of South Kensington Museum was crowded to
ovel flowing on Saturday night by an audience assembled to
hear a free lecture given by Professor fluxlcy on the subject
of Biology. Dividing his remarks uud,r four heads, Mr.
Huxley showed what biology is. why it should be studied,
and how and when Ii should be studied

Biology, he explained, was a science which covered
all the phenomena of livieg things as distinguished
from theta not living, and therefore related to
animals and plante. Undoubtedly, under "Biology,"
necessarily including man, they might include all
man's works, and thus embrace civil as well as
natural history but as there were about a quarter
of a million varieties of animals which biologists had
to know something about, they tacitly agreed to a sort
of practical convention by whirl they gave up altogether
the branches of what might be called civil history,
which weal a department by itself known under
the head of sociology. Biologists had permitted that
province to be autonomous, but it must not be sup-
posed that the biologist was trespassing in dealing
occasionally with politics or meddling with human
education, because, after all, these were parts of his
province, which he had only voluntarily forsaken.
(A.pplause.) On the question of why this science
should be studied., possibly the time might came when
it would seem an odd kind of question to ask why
we should not feel an interect in what constitutes our
own life, but at present, judging by the practice of
teattherm r,,c2 dotors, that would seem to be a matter
vvl-'ch did not concern us at all. He himself
p,g:eed with the sentiment of Thomas Hobbes, of
.Itl eirnesbury, that "the scope of all speculation is the
performance of some action or thing to be done." He
had not any very great respect for or intereet in mere
"knowing" as such. He judged the nature of human
pursuits by their bearing upon human interests, or in
other words by their utility. (Applause.) But he should
lilec that they should quite clearly understand what he
meant tv the word "utility." In an Angliahman's
mouth it generally meant "getting on." (Leughtere)
Every kind of knowledge was useful in proportion
as it tended to give people right ideas, which were the
essentlal foundation of all right practice, and to re-
move wrong !dem, which Were the fertile mother of
every description of error in practice; and inasmuch
as this world was absolutely governed by ideas, and
often by the wildest and most hypothetical ideas, it
was a matter of great importance that our knowledge
of things and theories, which seem far apart from our
daily lives, should he am far as possible true, and as far
as possible removed from error. It was in this sense
that he judged of the value of biology by its utility,
and he should ut be prepared to point o the fall neoes-
eity for the use of biology in a great many of the
affairs of life especially this life of oars in the .19th
century. Most people laid great stress and right
stress upon the conception they entertained of the
position of man in this unieerse, and his relation to
the rest of nature. Most people had been told, most
people held dill, that man occupied an isolated and
peculiar position in nature—that he lain the world but
not of the world, and that his relations with things
about him are of a remote character; that his origin is
recent, his career in likely to be short, and that he is
the great central figure around which the rest of things
in this world, like a set of marionettes, gyrate, This
was not what biologists told us—and for his present
argument they might be all wrong. Biologists told us
that all this was an entire mistake. They turned to
the physical organisation of men; they examined his
whole structure, his bone framework and its clothing.
They resolved him into the finest particles which the
microscope would enable them to break up; they con-
sidered his various functions and activities; they
looked at the manner in which he was concerned on
the surface of the world, and then they turned to the
animal world and taking the first bandy animal—say a
dog—they professed to be able to demonstrate that the
analysis of a dog leads to the same results in gross as the
analysis of a man. They find almost identically the
same bones having the same relation to each other.
They can trace the nerves of a dog and the nerves of a
man, and they find that the regions of sense are found
in man and are found in the dog. They analyse the
brain and the spinal cord, and they find what does for
the one does for the other. Moreover, they trace back
the dog and the man, and find that at a certain
stage the two creatures are not distinguishable
the cue from the other. They find the dog
has a dietribution over the surface of the world
comparable to that of the human species- and
what is true of th.e dog they find to be true of ell the
higher mammals, and that for the whole of these
creatures they can lay down a plan comprising all in
one great fundamental unity. Investigations of this
kind proceeded step by step, and gradation by gra-
dation, from man at the summit to a certain
animated jelly at the bottom of the scale, so that
the idea of Liebnitz that animals formed a graduated
scale although not exactly in the form he pro-
pou!ded, turned out to be saeentially correct.
More than that if the investigation were pursued in
the vegetable kingdom, you went from the gigantic
oak until you came down to a speck of animated
jelly which it was difficult to distinguish from
the lowest animal. Biologists had arrived at the
conclusion that there was unity of animal and
vegetable action, and that all varieties were but
gradations of the same great plan. It Was admitted
that a great gulf separated man from the lower animals;
but the difference was a difference of degree, not of
kind. Amongst animals were found various faculties,
especially mimicry. There were architects among
them, so that the architects could not claim exemption.
(Laughter.) But there was no sculpturing animal, no
modelling animal, and no drawing animal. He men-
tioned this so that such comfort might be derived from
it as artists might like to draw. (Laughter.) If what
biology told were true it would be necessary to get rid
of "man and his place in Nature." and to substitute
his real place, and such substitution was only pos-
sible by man putting himself in a position in which
he would be able to some extent to appreciate the
nature of the arguments which biologists had to
offer. On this point Professor Huxley ridiculed his
critics, who he maintained had not even mastered the
alphabet of the subject. He then drew attention to
the possible use of biology in relation to ascertaining
the true nature of the germs of infectious disease, he
pointed to the revolution in agriculture during the
last forty years due largely to the theories of Liebig
and to the precise definition of certain processes which
go on in plants, and which are parts of the subjects of
biology. Granting the use of studying biology, Mr.
Huxley argued that mere reading was of little value
without actual observation and experiment. Although
there were about 100,000 species of insects, yet any-
body who knew the structures of a properly-chosen
insect would have a fair conception of the structure
of the whole. In fact, there were such things
as types of form in animals and vegetables, and
for the purpose of getting precise knowledge of what
constitutes the leading forms of animal and plant life it
was not needful to actually examine more than a com-
paratively small number of specimens. In his own
laboratory the students were shown the structure of
water weeds, ferns, the common polyp, earthworms,
snails, lobsters, cray-fish, black beetles, common skate,
cod-fish, tortoise, and pigeon or rabbit. With regard to
museums am at present arranged, Professor Huxley drew
a humorous picture of the visitor trudging through a
quarter of a mile of animals more or less well stuffed,
and with all their names written out underneath
them—(latighter)--and unless the experience of others
was different from his own, the upshot of it
was that they left the splendid pile with sore feet, a
headache, and a general impression that the animal
kingdom was a mig,hty maze without a plan. For the
use of scientific students, he would have the skins and
skeletons of animals, and for the general public few
specimens of more distinctive animals, and a brief
statement of their nature and mode of life. On the
fourth point, when biology should be studied, he saw
no valid reason why it should not be part of an
ordinary school training, illustrations to be given in
the first instance from plants, to be followed at a later
stage, and among older pupils, with the commoner
animals. E.pscially was the study commended to
those who intended to follow the profession of medicine.
With this remark, and with another word of advice to
Messieurs the critics to get a little sound practical
elementary instruction, Professor Huxley concluded a
lecture that had engaged the closest attention of an
evidently appreciative assembly for upwards of an
hour.