526 * OEIGIN ' AND ' TASMANIAN FLORA ' 



were the greatest ; it was all a pie of Herbert Spencer ^ and 

 Buckle without the seasoning of either ; however, hearing 

 that Soapy Sam was to answer I waited to hear the end. 

 The meeting was so large that they had adjourned to the 

 Library, which was crammed with between 700 and 1000 

 people, for all the world was there to hear Sam Oxon. 



Well, Sam Oxon got up and spouted for half an hour 

 with inimitable spirit, ugliness and emptiness and unfairness. 

 I saw he was coached up by Owen and knew nothing, and he 

 said not a syllable but what was in the Eeviews ; he ridi- 

 culed you badly and Huxley savagely. Huxley answered 

 admirably and turned the tables, but he could not throw his 

 voice over so large an assembly, nor command the audience ; 

 and he did not allude to Sam's weak points nor put the 

 matter in a form or way that carried the audience. The 

 battle waxed hot. Lady Brewster fainted, the excitement 

 increased as others spoke ; my blood boiled, I felt myself 

 a dastard ; now I saw my advantage ; I swore to myself 

 that I would smite that Amalekite, Sam, hip and thigh if 

 my heart jumped out of my mouth, and I handed my name 

 up to the President (Henslow) as ready to throw down the 

 gauntlet. 



I must tell you that Henslow as President would have 

 none speak but those who had arguments to use, and four 

 persons had been burked by the audience and President 

 for mere declamation : it moreover became necessary for 

 each speaker to mount the platform, and so there I was cocked 

 up with Sam at my right elbow, and there and then I smashed 

 him amid rounds of applause. I hit him in the wind at the 

 first shot in ten words taken from his own ugly mouth ; 

 and then proceeded to demonstrate in as few more : (1) that 

 he could never have read your book, and (2) that he was 

 absolutely ignorant of the rudiments of Bot. Science. I 

 said a few more on the subject of my own experience and 

 conversion, and wound up with a very few observations on 

 the relative positions of the old and new hypotheses, and 



^ Herbert Spencer (1821-1903) the philosopher, had set forth his scheme 

 of evolutionary philosophy based on scientific data, independently of Darwin, 

 whose Origin of Species was, so to say, a crucial test of the doctrine of evolution. 

 Spencer was a life-long friend of Hooker and his scientific friends, and though he 

 avoided the regular scientific societiesi was one of the nine members of the 

 informal circle of the z Club. 



