522 ' OKIGIN ' AND * TASMANIAN FLORA ' 



But this consideration did not weigh with Owen, who 

 proceeded with the discussion, saying that he ' wished to 

 approach the subject in the spirit of the philosopher,' and 

 declared his * convicifion that there were facts by which the 

 public could come to some conclusion with regard to the 

 probabihties of the truth of Mr. Darwin's theory.' As one of 

 these facts, he asserted that the brain of the gorilla ' presented 

 more differences, as compared with the brain of man, than it 

 did when compared with the brains of the very lowest and most 

 problematical of the Quadrumana.' 



Now this proposition, enunciated by him at the Linnean 

 Society in 1857, had led Huxley to investigate the whole 

 question afresh. Previous research, new dissections, even the 

 specimens at the Hunterian Museum under Owen's charge, 

 told the opposite tale. 



Accordingly he rejoined with a * direct and unqualified 

 contradiction ' to these assertions, and pledged himself to 

 * justify that unusual procedure elsewhere ' — a pledge crush- 

 ingly fulfilled by his article * On the Zoological Relations of 

 Man with the Lower Animals,' which appeared in the first 

 number of the Natural History BevieWy January 1861. (See 

 Huxley, ' Scientific Memoirs,' ii. 36.) 



Battle was in the air. The encounter was renewed on 

 the Saturday, June 30, when Dr. Draper of New York read a 

 paper on ' The Intellectual Development of Europe considered 

 with reference to the Views of Mr. Darwin.' It was not to hear 

 his hour-long discourse, however, but the coming eloquence 

 of the Bishop, that the crowd gathered. The Lecture-room 

 of the Museum could not hold them ; they moved to the long 

 west room, since partitioned across for the purposes of the 

 Hbrary. Even this was crowded to suffocation long before 

 the speakers appeared. Seven hundred or more managed to 

 find place ; the very windows by which the room was lighted 

 down the length of its west side were packed with ladies, whose 

 white handkerchiefs, waving and fluttering in the air at the 

 end of the Bishop's speech, were an unforgettable factor in 

 the acclamation of the crowd. 



Neither of the destined champions of the day bad intended 



