T.H. Huxley.
[In 1872 Huxley was at length enabled to establish in his regular classes a system of science teaching based upon laboratory work by the students, which he had long felt to be the only true method. It involved the verification of every fact by each student, and was a training in scientific method even more than in scientific fact. Had circumstances only permitted, the new epoch in biological teaching might have been antedated by many years. But, as he says in the preface to the "Practical Biology," 1875:—]
Practical work was forbidden by the limitations of space in the building in Jermyn Street, which possessed no room applicable to the purpose of a laboratory, and I was obliged to content myself, for many years, with what seemed the next best thing, namely, as full an exposition as I could give of the characters of certain plants and animals, selected as types of vegetable and animal organisation, by way of introduction to systematic zoology and paleontology.
[There was no laboratory work, but he would show an experiment or a dissection during the lecture or perhaps for a few minutes after, when the audience crowded round the lecture table.
The opportunity came in 1871. As he afterwards impressed upon the great city companies in regard to technical education, the teaching of science throughout the country turned upon the supply of trained teachers. The part to be played by elementary science under the Education Act of 1870, added urgency to the question of proper teaching. With this in view, he organised a course of instruction for those who had been preparing pupils for the examinations of the Science and Art Department, "scientific missionaries," as he described them to Dr. Dohrn.
In the promotion of the practical teaching of biology (writes the late Jeffery Parker, "Natural Science" 8 49), Huxley's services can hardly be overestimated. Botanists had always been in the habit of distributing flowers to their students, which they could dissect or not as they chose; animal histology was taught in many colleges under the name of practical physiology; and at Oxford an excellent system of zoological work had been established by the late Professor Rolleston. ("Rolleston (Professor Lankester writes to me) was the first to systematically conduct the study of Zoology and Comparative Anatomy in this country by making use of a carefully selected series of animals. His 'types' were the Rat, the Common Pigeon, the Frog, the Perch, the Crayfish, Blackbeetle, Anodon, Snail, Earthworm, Leech, Tapeworm. He had a series of dissections of these mounted, also loose dissections and elaborate manuscript descriptions. The student went through this series, dissecting fresh specimens for himself. After some ten years' experience Rolleston printed his manuscript directions and notes as a book, called 'Forms of Animal Life.'
"This all preceded the practical class at South Kensington in 1871. I have no doubt that Rolleston was influenced in his plan by your father's advice. But Rolleston had the earlier opportunity of putting the method into practice.
"Your father's series of types were chosen so as to include plants, and he gave more attention to microscopic forms and to microscopic structure than did Rolleston."
It was distinctive of the lectures that they were on biology, on plants as well as animals, to illustrate all the fundamental features of living things.)
But the biological laboratory, as it is now understood, may be said to date from about 1870, when Huxley, with the cooperation of Professors Foster, Rutherford, Lankester, Martin, and others (T.J. Parker, G.B. Howes, and the present Sir W. Thiselton Dyer, K.C.M.G., C.I.E.,), held short summer classes for science teachers at South Kensington, the daily work consisting of an hour's lecture followed by four hours' laboratory work, in which the students verified for themselves facts which they had hitherto heard about and taught to their unfortunate pupils from books alone. The naive astonishment and delight of the more intelligent among them was sometimes almost pathetic. One clergyman, who had for years conducted classes in physiology under the Science and Art Department, was shown a drop of his own blood under the microscope. "Dear me!" he exclaimed, "it's just like the picture in Huxley's 'Physiology.'"