HUXLEY AND NATURAL SELECTION. 139 



even, with more or less ease, imagine it." And his 

 main objection under this head was the supposed diffi- 

 culty in securing the union of successful variations. 

 The actual words have been already quoted on page 

 83, where it was shown that the criticism does 

 not apply to natural selection, but to a theory mis- 

 taken by the speaker for that of Darwin. Curiously 

 enough, the first objection of the insufficiency of 

 time was the indirect cause of a subsequent tren- 

 chant criticism by Professor Perry of the line of 

 mathematical reasoning on which the limit had 

 been fixed. 



Huxley was called on to second the vote of 

 thanks, and his speech had evidently been considered 

 with the greatest care. I quote the passages which 

 bear on evolution and natural selection from the 

 Times of August 9th, 1894, in which a verbatim 

 report is furnished : — 



"... As one of those persons who for many years past 

 had made a pretty free use of the comfortable word ' evolution,' 

 let him remind them that 34 years ago a considerable dis- 

 cussion, to which the President had referred, took place in 

 one of their sectional meetings upon what people frequently 

 called the ' Darwinism question,' but which on that occasion 

 was not the Darwinism question, but the very much deeper 

 question which lay beneath the Darwinism question — he 

 meant the question of evolution. . . . The two doctrines, 

 the two main points, for which these men [Sir John Lubbock, 

 Sir J. Hooker, and the speaker] fought were that species were 

 mutable, and that the great variety of animal forms had pro- 

 ceeded from gradual and natural modification of the com- 

 paratively few primitive forms " 



