Perhaps no hero-worship was ever more unselfish, more utterly loyal, or more fully rewarded. As time went on, and intimacy increased, and restraint wore off, Mr. Romanes found that the great master was as much to be admired for his personal character as for his wonderful gifts, and to the youth who never, in the darkest days of utter scepticism, parted with the love for goodness, for beauty of character, this was an overwhelming joy.
In a poem written about 1884 Mr. Romanes has expressed something of what he felt for Mr. Darwin, and in this he has poured out his 'hero-worship' in terms which were to him the expressions of simple truth.
It is interesting to look over the long series of letters from 1874 to 1882 and notice how the formal 'Dear Mr. Romanes' drops into the familiar 'Dear Romanes,' and the letters become more and more affectionate, intimate, personal.
About this time also Mr. Romanes made many other scientific friends, Professor Schäfer, Professor Cossar Ewart, Mr. Francis Darwin, Dr. Pye Smith, Professor R. Lankester, Professor Clifford, Dr. Lauder Brunton, and many more; and as his work became known it is pleasant to see with what kindness of welcome the new recruit was welcomed to the scientific army by such men as Professor Huxley, Sir John Lubbock, Sir Joseph Hooker, Mr. Busk, Mr. F. Galton, and Mr. Spottiswoode, then President of the Royal Society.
Just at that time there was a set of rising young biologists who all seemed destined to do good work, and it is melancholy to look back and to see 'how of that not too numerous band a number have been taken from us in the prime of life, Garrod, Frank Balfour, Moseley, H. Carpenter, Milnes Marshall, Romanes.'[5]
At Dunskaith a little laboratory was fitted up in an adjoining cottage, and here during the summer Mr. Romanes worked constantly for some years, diversifying his labours by shooting. It was in his country home also that he began those series of observations on animals which he worked up into the 'Animal Intelligence' of the International Scientific Series, perhaps the most popular of his books. The terrier Mathal was his special companion, and he observed various traits of her intelligence which are recorded in 'Mental Evolution in Animals,' pp. 156, 157, 158. It was also at Dunskaith that he began his first attempts at verse making, but for some years these did not come to much.
His scientific work at Dunskaith led to a paper communicated to the Royal Society in 1875, and entitled 'Preliminary Observations on the Locomotor System of Medusæ.'
This paper the Royal Society honoured by making it the Croonian Lecture, an honour awarded to the best biological paper of each year.[6]
Mr. Romanes had worked for two years, or rather two summers, very constantly and very strenuously on the Medusæ. He set himself to try and discover whether or not the rudiments of a nervous system existed in these creatures. Agassiz had maintained it did, others considered his deductions premature, and Huxley, in his 'Classification of Animals,' summed up the much-debated question by saying that 'no nervous system had yet been discovered in Medusæ.'
Microscopically, it had already been shown that in some forms of Medusæ there are present certain fine fibres running along the margin of the swimming bell, from their appearance said to be nerves, but in no case had it been shown that they functioned as such. Thus it was to solve this question, whether or not a nervous system, known to be present in all animals higher in the zoological scale, makes its first appearance in the Medusæ, that Mr. Romanes entered upon a long series of physiological experiments, first on the group of small 'naked-eyed' Medusæ, and then on the larger 'covered-eyed' form, the latter division containing the common jelly-fish. These names, 'naked-eyed' and 'covered-eyed,' are given to the two groups on account of a difference in their sense organs, which are situated on the margin of the umbrella or swimming bell, and are protected by a hood of gelatinous matter in the 'covered-eyed' forms, so called in contradistinction to the 'naked-eyed' group, where the hood is absent.