reputation on the side of evolution.  Next, in April, 1860, he published a long article in the Westminster Review, then a leading organ of advanced opinion, on The Origin of Species, some quotations from which article were made in the last chapter.  Apart from its strong support of the doctrine of evolution, its whole-hearted praise of Darwin’s achievements, and the clear way in which, while it showed the value of natural selection as the only satisfactory hypothesis in the field, it gave reasons for regarding it strictly as an hypothesis, the review is specially interesting as a contrast to reviews which appeared about the same time in the Edinburgh Review and in the Quarterly.  Both these were not only exceedingly unfavourable, but were written in a spirit of personal abuse singularly unworthy of their authors and still more of their subject.  The review in the Edinburgh had come as a particularly great shock to Darwin, Huxley, and their friends.  Sir Richard Owen, in many ways, was at that time the most distinguished anatomist in England.  He had been an ardent follower of Cuvier, and in England had carried on the palaeontological work of the great Frenchman.  He was a personal friend of the court, a well-known man in the best society, and in many ways a worthy upholder of the best traditions of science.  In the particular matter of species, he was known to be by no means a firm supporter of the orthodox views.  When Darwin’s paper was read at the Linnaean Society, and afterwards when the Origin was published, the verdict of Owen was looked to with the greatest interest by the general public.  For a time he wavered, and even expressed himself of the opinion that he had already in his published works included a considerable portion of Darwin’s views.  But two things seemed to have influenced him:  First, Wilberforce, the Bishop of Oxford, and Sedgwick and Whewell, the two best-known men at Cambridge, urged him to stamp once for all, as he only could do, upon this “new and pernicious doctrine.”  Secondly, combined with his great abilities, he had the keenest personal interest in his own position as the leader of English science, and had no particular friendship for men or for views that seemed likely to threaten his own supreme position.  In a very short time he changed from being neutral, with a tendency in favour of the new views, to being a bitter opponent of them.  In scientific societies and in London generally, naturally enough he constantly came across the younger scientific men, such as Huxley and Hooker, who had declared for Darwin, and he made the irretrievable mistake of for a time attempting to disguise his opposition while he was writing the most bitter of all the articles against Darwinism.  That appeared in the Edinburgh Review in April, 1860, and the range of knowledge it displayed, and the form of arguments employed, naturally enough betrayed the secret of its authorship, although Owen for very long attempted to conceal his connection with it.  Darwin, who had the most unusual generosity towards his opponents, found this review too much for him.  Writing to Lyell soon after its publication, he said: