It was the merest chance, as I have already said, that Huxley attended the meeting of the section that morning.  Dr. Draper of New York was to read a paper on the “Intellectual Development of Europe considered with reference to the views of Mr. Darwin.”  “I can still hear,” writes one who was present, “the American accents of Dr. Draper’s opening address when he asked ‘Air we a fortuitous concourse of atoms?’” However, it was not to hear him, but the eloquence of the Bishop, that the members of the Association crowded in such numbers into the Lecture Room of the Museum, that this, the appointed meeting-place of the section, had to be abandoned for the long west room, since cut in two by a partition for the purposes of the library.  It was not term time, nor were the general public admitted; nevertheless the room was crowded to suffocation long before the protagonists appeared on the scene, 700 persons or more managing to find places.  The very windows by which the room was lighted down the length of its west side were packed with ladies, whose white handkerchiefs, waving and fluttering in the air at the end of the Bishop’s speech, were an unforgettable factor in the acclamation of the crowd.

On the east side between the two doors was the platform.  Professor Henslow, the President of the section, took his seat in the centre; upon his right was the Bishop, and beyond him again Dr. Draper; on his extreme left was Mr. Dingle, a clergyman from Lanchester, near Durham, with Sir J. Hooker and Sir J. Lubbock in front of him, and nearer the centre, Professor Beale of King’s College, London, and Huxley.

The clergy, who shouted lustily for the Bishop, were massed in the middle of the room; behind them in the north-west corner a knot of undergraduates (one of these was T.H.  Green, who listened but took no part in the cheering) had gathered together beside Professor Brodie, ready to lift their voices, poor minority though they were, for the opposite party.  Close to them stood one of the few men among the audience already in Holy orders, who joined in—­and indeed led—­the cheers for the Darwinians.

So “Dr. Draper droned out his paper, turning first to the right hand and then to the left, of course bringing in a reference to the Origin of Species which set the ball rolling.”

An hour or more that paper lasted, and then discussion began.  The President “wisely announced in limine that none who had not valid arguments to bring forward on one side or the other would be allowed to address the meeting; a caution that proved necessary, for no fewer than four combatants had their utterances burked by him, because of their indulgence in vague declamation.” ("Life of Darwin” l.c.)