Several accounts of the scene are already in existence:  one in the “Life of Darwin” (volume 2 page 320), another in the 1892 “Life,” page 236 sq.; a third that of “Lyell” (volume 2 page 335), the slight differences between them representing the difference between individual recollections of eye-witnesses.  In addition to these I have been fortunate enough to secure further reminiscences from several other eye-witnesses.

Two papers in Section D, of no great importance in themselves, became historical as affording the opponents of Darwin their opportunity of making an attack upon his theory which should tell with the public.  The first was on Thursday, June 28.  Dr. Daubeny of Oxford made a communication to the Section, “On the final causes of the sexuality of plants, with particular reference to Mr. Darwin’s work on the “Origin of Species.” (My best thanks are due to Mr. F. Darwin for permission to quote his accounts of the meeting; other citations are from the “Athenaeum” reports of July 14, 1860.) Huxley was called upon to speak by the President, but tried to avoid a discussion, on the ground “that a general audience, in which sentiment would unduly interfere with intellect, was not the public before which such a discussion should be carried on.”

This consideration, however, did not stop the discussion; it was continued by Owen.  He said he “wished to approach the subject in the spirit of the philosopher,” and declared his “conviction that there were facts by which the public could come to some conclusion with regard to the probabilities of the truth of Mr. Darwin’s theory.”  As one of these facts, he stated that the brain of the gorilla “presented more differences, as compared with the brain of man, than it did when compared with the brains of the very lowest and most problematical of the Quadrumana.”

Now this was the very point, as said above, upon which Huxley had made special investigations during the last two years, with precisely opposite results, such as, indeed, had been arrived at by previous investigators.  Hereupon he replied, giving these assertions a “direct and unqualified contradiction,” and pledging himself to “justify that unusual procedure elsewhere,”—­a pledge which was amply fulfilled in the pages of the “Natural History Review” for 1861.

Accordingly it was to him, thus marked out as the champion of the most debatable theory of evolution, that, two days later, the Bishop addressed his sarcasms, only to meet with a withering retort.  For on the Friday there was peace; but on the Saturday came a yet fiercer battle over the “Origin,” which loomed all the larger in the public eye, because it was not merely the contradiction of one anatomist by another, but the open clash between Science and the Church.  It was, moreover, not a contest of bare fact or abstract assertion, but a combat of wit between two individuals, spiced with the personal element which appeals to one of the strongest instincts of every large audience.