[Footnote B:  “Rejoinder to certain Remarks,” &c. Ibid. 1864.]

[Footnote C:  “Further Remarks,” &c. Ibid.]

But in 1891 Pawkins, whose health had been bad for some time, published some work upon the “mesoblast” of the Death’s Head Moth.  What the mesoblast of the Death’s Head Moth may be, does not matter a rap in this story.  But the work was far below his usual standard, and gave Hapley an opening he had coveted for years.  He must have worked night and day to make the most of his advantage.

In an elaborate critique he rent Pawkins to tatters—­one can fancy the man’s disordered black hair, and his queer dark eyes flashing as he went for his antagonist—­and Pawkins made a reply, halting, ineffectual, with painful gaps of silence, and yet malignant.  There was no mistaking his will to wound Hapley, nor his incapacity to do it.  But few of those who heard him—­I was absent from that meeting—­realised how ill the man was.

Hapley had got his opponent down, and meant to finish him.  He followed with a simply brutal attack upon Pawkins, in the form of a paper upon the development of moths in general, a paper showing evidence of a most extraordinary amount of mental labour, and yet couched in a violently controversial tone.  Violent as it was, an editorial note witnesses that it was modified.  It must have covered Pawkins with shame and confusion of face.  It left no loophole; it was murderous in argument, and utterly contemptuous in tone; an awful thing for the declining years of a man’s career.

The world of entomologists waited breathlessly for the rejoinder from Pawkins.  He would try one, for Pawkins had always been game.  But when it came it surprised them.  For the rejoinder of Pawkins was to catch the influenza, to proceed to pneumonia, and to die.

It was perhaps as effectual a reply as he could make under the circumstances, and largely turned the current of feeling against Hapley.  The very people who had most gleefully cheered on those gladiators became serious at the consequence.  There could be no reasonable doubt the fret of the defeat had contributed to the death of Pawkins.  There was a limit even to scientific controversy, said serious people.  Another crushing attack was already in the press and appeared on the day before the funeral.  I don’t think Hapley exerted himself to stop it.  People remembered how Hapley had hounded down his rival, and forgot that rival’s defects.  Scathing satire reads ill over fresh mould.  The thing provoked comment in the daily papers.  This it was that made me think that you had probably heard of Hapley and this controversy.  But, as I have already remarked, scientific workers live very much in a world of their own; half the people, I dare say, who go along Piccadilly to the Academy every year, could not tell you where the learned societies abide.  Many even think that Research is a kind of happy-family cage in which all kinds of men lie down together in peace.