of species of Birds; and then, denying a fortiori the derivation of the species Man from Ape, he rhetorically invoked the aid of feeling, and said, ’If any one were to be willing to trace his descent through an ape as his grandfather, would he be willing to trace his descent similarly on the side of his grandmother?’ His false humour was an attempt to arouse the antipathy about degrading woman to the quadrumana.  Your father’s reply showed there was vulgarity as well as folly in the Bishop’s words; and the impression distinctly was, that the Bishop’s party, as they left the room, felt abashed, and recognised the Bishop had forgotten to behave like a perfect gentleman.”)

This was the fatal mistake of his speech.  Huxley instantly grasped the tactical advantage which the descent to personalities gave him.  He turned to Sir Benjamin Brodie, who was sitting beside him, and emphatically striking his hand upon his knee, exclaimed,] “The Lord hath delivered him into mine hands.” [The bearing of the exclamation did not dawn upon Sir Benjamin until after Huxley had completed his “forcible and eloquent” answer to the scientific part of the Bishop’s argument, and proceeded to make his famous retort. (The “Athenaeum” reports him as saying that Darwin’s theory was an explanation of phenomena in Natural History, as the undulatory theory was of the phenomena of light.  No one objected to that theory because an undulation of light had never been arrested and measured.  Darwin’s theory was an explanation of facts, and his book was full of new facts, all bearing on his theory.  Without asserting that every part of that theory had been confirmed, he maintained that it was the best explanation of the origin of species which had yet been offered.  With regard to the psychological distinction between men and animals, man himself was once a monad—­a mere atom, and nobody could say at what moment in the history of his development he became consciously intelligent.  The question was not so much one of a transmutation or transition of species, as of the production of forms which became permanent.

Thus the short-legged sheep of America was not produced gradually, but originated in the birth of an original parent of the whole stock, which had been kept up by a rigid system of artificial selection.)

On this (continues the writer in “Macmillan’s Magazine”) Mr. Huxley slowly and deliberately arose.  A slight tall figure, stern and pale, very quiet and very grave ("Young, cool, quiet, scientific—­scientific in fact and in treatment.”—­J.R.  Green.  A certain piquancy must have been added to the situation by the superficial resemblance in feature between the two men, so different in temperament and expression.  Indeed next day at Hardwicke, a friend came up to Mr. Fanning and asked who his guest was, saying, “Surely it is the son of the Bishop of Oxford."), he stood before us and spoke those tremendous words—­words which no one