140 THE COMING [CH. 



a Darwinian, though not without putting in a serious caveat. 

 Nevertheless, he was a tower of strength and his courageous stand 

 for truth as against consistency, did him infinite honour 139 .' 



Huxley himself accepted the theory of Natural 

 Selection but not without some important reserve 

 tions these, however, did not prevent him from 

 becoming its most ardent and successful champion. 

 Darwin used to acknowledge Huxley's great service 

 to him in undertaking the defence of the theory 

 a defence which his own hatred of controversy and 

 the state of his health made him unwilling to under- 

 take by laughingly calling him 'my general agent ! ' 

 while Huxley himself in replying to the critics, 

 declared that he was 'Darwin's bulldog.' 



Although, at first, Darwin was able to enumerate 

 less than a dozen naturalists who were prepared to 

 accept his views, while influential leaders of thought 

 in science like Richard Owen in this country and 

 Louis Agassiz in America were bitterly opposed to 

 them, the theory gradually obtained supporters es- 

 pecially among the younger cultivators of botany, 

 zoology and geology. 



It is evident that Darwin for some time regarded 

 his ' abstract,' as he called the Origin of Species, as 

 only a temporary expedient one to be superseded 

 by the publication of the much more extended work, 

 designed and commenced long before. Although the 

 Origin was only published late in November 1859, 



