524 * ORIGIN ' AND ' TASMANIAN FLOEA ' 



evolution ; rock-pigeons were what rock-pigeons had always 

 been.' 



Then, passing from the perpetuity of species in birds, and 

 denying a fortiori the derivation of the species Man from Ape, 

 he tried to stir feeling ; shall woman also be set on a level 

 with the ape ? * Turning to his antagonist with a smiling 

 insolence, he begged to know whether it was through his grand- 

 father or his grandmother that he claimed his descent from 

 a monkey.' 



This was equally bad taste and bad tactics. It gaye his 

 opponent an opportunity not only of restating the true position 

 of science in the theory of common descent and of showing 

 how incompetent the Bishop was to enter upon the discussion, 

 but of clinching the latter argument in a way easily understood 

 by his hearers. The gibing descent to personalities was met 

 by a thrust that staggered the orator's personal ascendency. 

 For concluding his scientific reply, Huxley went on to this 

 effect : / 



I asserted — and I repeat — that a man has no rekson 

 to be ashamed of having an ape for his grandfather. If 

 there were an ancestor whom I should feel shame in 

 recalling it would rather be a man — a man of restless 

 and versatile intellect — who, not content with an /equi- 

 vocal success in his own sphere of activity, plunges into 

 scientific questions with which he has no real acquaint- 

 ance, only to obscure them by an aimless rhetoric, and 

 distract the attention of his hearers from the real point at 

 issue by eloquent digressions and skilled appeals to religious 

 prejudice.^ 



^ This is from a letter of the late John Richard Green, the historian, 

 then an undergraduate, to his frie-d, afterwards Professor Boyd Dawkins. 

 It is fairly certain, however, that the word * equivocal ' was not used, 

 and the sentence, as it stands, gives the impression of being ' much too 

 "Green."' 



Simpler and in many ways more characteristic in turn and balance, is the 

 impression recorded in a letter to me by Mr. A. G. Vernon Harcourt, F.R.S., 

 late Reader in Chemistry at the University of Oxford. 



' " But if this question is treated, not as a matter for the calm investigation 

 of science, and if I am asked whether I would choose to be descended from 

 the poor animal of low intelligence and stooping gait who grins and chatters as 

 we pass, or from a man, endowed with great ability and a splendid position, who 

 should use these gifts " (here, as the point became clear, there was a great 



