50 LIFE OF SIR JOHN LUBBOCK oh. 



side of those who supported Darwin, and his 

 advocacy of the evolutionist cause at the meeting 

 that year of the British Association at Oxford 

 is thus referred to, long afterwards, in Science 

 and the Human Mind : 



The famous scene between Bishop Wilberforce and 

 Huxley at the Oxford Meeting of the British Association 

 in 1860 has often been described. Wilberforce had 

 obtained a first class in the Oxford Mathematical Schools 

 in his youth, and therefore, being regarded by his 

 University as a master of all branches of natural know- 

 ledge, had been selected to uphold the cause of orthodoxy. 

 The Bishop endeavoured to kill the notion of evolution 

 with ridicule and sarcasm — ridicule for Darwin and his 

 labours, sarcasm for Huxley and his courage. It seems 

 strange now to think that a majority of the hearers were 

 probably on the side of the Bishop, and were totally 

 unable, from preconceived ideas, to weigh the value of 

 the facts laid before them on behalf of Darwin's theory, 

 or to appreciate the embryological evidence for evolution 

 on which Sir John Lubbock, now Lord Avebury, insisted. 1 



Shortly after the publication of the Origin of 

 Species, Mr. Lowe (the Chancellor of the Ex- 

 chequer) and Mr. Busk (President of the College 

 of Surgeons) were at High Elms. On Saturday 

 evening Mrs. Lowe was between young Lubbock 

 and Mr. Busk, and the conversation turned on the 

 great book. Mrs. Lowe asked Mr. Busk " just to 

 explain " why one germ should develop into a man 

 and another into a kangaroo. He suggested that 

 she should read the book, so she took it upstairs. 

 Next day she sat in the drawing-room with it, 

 and finished it about 4.30, shutting it up with a 

 clap, and saying : " Well, I don't see much in 

 your Mr. Darwin after all : if I had had his 



1 Science and the Human Mind, Whetham, p. 214. 



