First spoke (writes Professor Farrar (Canon of Durham.)) a layman from Brompton, who gave his name as being one of the Committee of the (newly formed) Economic section of the Association.  He, in a stentorian voice, let off his theological venom.  Then jumped up Richard Greswell with a thin voice, saying much the same, but speaking as a scholar (The Reverend Richard Greswell, B.D., Tutor of Worcester College.); but we did not merely want any theological discussion, so we shouted them down.  Then a Mr. Dingle got up and tried to show that Darwin would have done much better if he had taken him into consultation.  He used the blackboard and began a mathematical demonstration on the question—­“Let this point A be man, and let that point B be the mawnkey.”  He got no further; he was shouted down with cries of “mawnkey.”  None of these had spoken more than three minutes.  It was when these were shouted down that Henslow said he must demand that the discussion should rest on scientific grounds only.

Then there were calls for the Bishop, but he rose and said he understood his friend Professor Beale had something to say first.  Beale, who was an excellent histologist, spoke to the effect that the new theory ought to meet with fair discussion, but added, with great modesty, that he himself had not sufficient knowledge to discuss the subject adequately.  Then the Bishop spoke the speech that you know, and the question about his mother being an ape, or his grandmother.

From the scientific point of view, the speech was of small value.  It was evident from his mode of handling the subject that he had been “crammed up to the throat,” and knew nothing at first hand; he used no argument beyond those to be found in his “Quarterly” article, which appeared a few days later, and is now admitted to have been inspired by Owen.  “He ridiculed Darwin badly and Huxley savagely; but,” confesses one of his strongest opponents, “all in such dulcet tones, so persuasive a manner, and in such well turned periods, that I who had been inclined to blame the President for allowing a discussion that could serve no scientific purpose, now forgave him from the bottom of my heart.” ("Life of Darwin” l.c.)

The Bishop spoke thus “for full half an hour with inimitable spirit, emptiness and unfairness.”  “In a light, scoffing tone, florid and fluent, he assured us there was nothing in the idea of evolution; rock-pigeons were what rock-pigeons had always been.  Then, turning to his antagonist with a smiling insolence, he begged to know, was it through his grandfather or his grandmother that he claimed his descent from a monkey?” ("Reminiscences of a Grandmother,” “Macmillan’s Magazine,” October 1898.  Professor Farrar thinks this version of what the Bishop said is slightly inaccurate.  His impression is that the words actually used seemed at the moment flippant and unscientific rather than insolent, vulgar, or personal.  The Bishop, he writes, “had been talking of the perpetuity