4 Marlborough Place, November 21, 1877.

My dear Darwin,

Nothing ever gave me greater pleasure than the using the chance of speaking my mind about you and your work which was afforded me at the dinner the other night.  I said not a word beyond what I believe to be strictly accurate; and, please Sir, I didn’t sneer at anybody.  There was only a little touch of the whip at starting, and it was so tied round with ribbons that it took them some time to find out where the flick had hit.

T.H.  Huxley.

[He writes to his wife:—­]

I will see if I can recollect the speech.  I made a few notes sitting in Dewar’s room before the dinner.  But as usual I did not say some things I meant to say and said others that came up on the spur of the moment.

[And again:—­]

Please I didn’t say that Reaumur was the other greatest scientific man since Aristotle.  But I said that in a certain character of his work he was the biggest man between Aristotle and Darwin.  I really must write out an “authorised version” of my speech.  I hear the Latin oration is to be in “Nature” this week, and Lockyer wanted me to give him the heads of my speech, but I did not think it would be proper to do so, and refused.  I have written out my speech as well as I can recollect it.  I do not mind any friend seeing it, but you must not let it get about as the dinner was a private one.

[The notes of his speech run as follows:—­]

Mr. President,

I rise with pleasure and with alacrity to respond to the toast which you have just proposed, and I may say that I consider one of the greatest honours which have befallen me, to be called upon to represent my distinguished friend Mr. Darwin upon this occasion.  I say to represent Mr. Darwin, for I cannot hope to personate him, or to say all that would be dictated by a mind conspicuous for its powerful humility and strong gentleness.

Mr. Darwin’s work had fully earned the distinction you have to-day conferred upon him four-and-twenty years ago; but I doubt not that he would have found in that circumstance an exemplification of the wise foresight of his revered intellectual mother.  Instead of offering her honours when they ran a chance of being crushed beneath the accumulated marks of approbation of the whole civilised world, the University has waited until the trophy was finished, and has crowned the edifice with the delicate wreath of academic appreciation.

This is what I suppose Mr. Darwin might have said had he been happily able to occupy my place.  Let me now speak in my own person and in obedience to your suggestion, let me state as briefly as possible what appear to me to be Mr. Darwin’s distinctive merits.

From the time of Aristotle to the present day I know of but one man who has shown himself Mr. Darwin’s equal in one field of research—­and that is Reaumur.  In the breadth of range of Mr. Darwin’s investigations upon the ways and works of animals and plants, in the minute patient accuracy of his observations, and in the philosophical ideas which have guided them, I know of no one who is to be placed in the same rank with him except Reaumur.