1860.] BRITISH ASSOCIATION. I15 



and in such well-turned periods, that I who had been inclined 

 to blame the President for allowing a discussion that could 

 serve no scientific purpose now forgave him from the bottom 

 of my heart. Unfortunately the Bishop, hurried along on the 

 current of his own eloquence, so far forgot himself as to push 

 his attempted advantage to the verge of personality in a tell- 

 ing passage in which he turned round and addressed Huxley : 

 I forget the precise words, and quote from Lyell. ' The 

 Bishop asked whether Huxley was related by his grand- 

 father's or grandmother's side to an ape.'* Huxley replied 

 to the scientific argument of his opponent with force and elo- 

 quence, and to the personal allusion with a self-restraint, that 

 gave dignity to his crushing rejoinder." 



Many versions of Mr. Huxley's speech were current : the 

 following report of his conclusion is from a letter addressed 

 by the late John Richard Green, then an undergraduate, to 

 a fellow-student, now Professor Boyd Dawkins. " I asserted, 

 and I repeat, that a man has no reason to be ashamed of 

 having an ape for his grandfather. If there were an ancestor 

 whom I should feel shame in recalling, it would be a man, a 

 man of restless and versatile intellect, who, not content with 

 an equivocal \ 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 dis- 

 tract the attention of his hearers from the real point at issue 

 by eloquent digressions, and skilled appeals to religious 

 prejudice." 



The letter above quoted continues : 



" The excitement was now at its height ; a lady fainted 

 and had to be carried out, and it was some time before the 

 discussion was resumed. Some voices called for Hooker, and 

 his name having been handed up, the President invited him 



* Lyell's ' Letters,' vol. ii. p. 335. 



f Prof. V. Carus, who has a distinct recollection of the scene, does not 

 remember the word equivocal. He believes too that Lyell's version of the 

 " ape " sentence is slightly incorrect. 



