Huxley[8] was a close friend of the family, and whilst still a child Ray met Hooker, Henfrey, Clifford, Gosse, Owen, Forbes, Carpenter, Lyell, Murchison, Henslow and Darwin.

His interventions, responses and advocacies were often colourful and forceful, as befitted an admirer of Huxley, for whom he worked as a demonstrator when a young man.

Influential as teacher and writer on biological theories, comparative anatomy, and evolution, Lankester studied the protozoa, mollusca, and arthropoda.

[21] At University College London (the 'Godless Institute of Gower Street') Lankester taught Raphael Weldon (1860–1906), who went on to succeed him in the chair at UCL.

Another interesting student was Alfred Gibbs Bourne, who went on to hold senior positions in biology and education in the Indian Empire.

When Lankester left to take up the Linacre chair at Oxford in 1891, the Grant Museum at UCL continued to grow under Weldon who added a number of extremely rare specimens.

[22] After Huxley the most important influence on his thought was August Weismann, the German zoologist who rejected Lamarckism, and wholeheartedly advocated natural selection as the key force in evolution at a time when other biologists had doubts.

Weismann's separation of germplasm (genetic material) from soma (somatic cells) was an idea which took many years before its significance was generally appreciated.

[23] Those he influenced (in addition to Weldon) included Edwin Stephen Goodrich (Linacre chair in zoology at Oxford 1921–1946) and (indirectly) Julian Huxley (the evolutionary synthesis).

[24] Connecting Dohrn's work with Darwinism, Lankester held that degeneration was one of three general avenues that evolution might take (the others being balance and elaboration).

In Sacculina, a genus of barnacles which is a parasite of crabs, the female is little more than "a sac of eggs, and absorbed nourishment from the juices of its host by root-like processes" (+ wood-engraved illustration).

As antecedents of degeneration, Lankester lists:[26] He also considered the axolotl, a mole salamander, which can breed whilst still in its gilled larval form without maturing into a terrestrial adult.

Lankester extended the idea of degeneration to human societies, which carries little significance today, but it is a good example of a biological concept invading social science.

Moreover, the Superintendent (= Director) of the NHM was the subordinate of the Principal Librarian of the BM, a fact which was bound to cause trouble since that august person was not a scientist.

[29][30][31] We can see that the conflict which took place was one aspect of the struggle undertaken, in their different ways, by Owen, Hooker, Huxley and Tyndall to emancipate science from enslavement by traditional forces.

There was trouble from the moment Lankester put forward his candidature for the office vacated by Sir William Flower, who was on the point of death.

There is good evidence that Thompson, an efficient and authoritarian figure, intended to take control of the whole Museum, including the Natural History departments.

[32][33] In the absence of Huxley, who had led most of the battles for over thirty years, it was left to the younger generation to struggle for the independence of science, Mitchell, Poulton, and Weldon were his main supporters, and together they lobbied the Trustees, the Government and in the press to get their point over.

That Lankester had some friends in high places was shown by the Archbishop of Canterbury offering him an enhanced pension, and the knighthood that was bestowed on him the next year.

Lankester had close family connections with Suffolk (the Woodbridge and Felixstowe area), and was an active member of the Rationalist group associated with the circle of Thomas Huxley, Samuel Laing and others.