238 ORIGIN OF SPECIES. [Ch. XIII. 



with inimitable spirit, emptiness and unfairness. It was 

 evident from his handling of the subject that he had been 

 ' crammed ' up to the throat, and that he knew nothing at first 

 hand ; in fact, he used no argument not to be found in his 

 Quarterly article.* He ridiculed Darwin badly, and Huxley 

 savagely, but all in such dulcet tones, so persuasive a manner, 

 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." 



What follows is from notes most kindly supplied by the Hon. 

 and Rev. W. H. Fremantle, who was an eye-witness of the scene. 



" The Bishop of Oxford attacked Darwin, at first playfully 

 but at last in grim earnest. It was known that the Bishop had 

 written an article against Darwin in the last Quarterly Beview : 

 it was also rumoured that Professor Owen had been staying at 

 Cuddesden and had primed the Bishop, who was to act as 

 mouthpiece to the great Palaeontologist, who did not himself 

 dare to enter the lists. The Bishop, however, did not show 

 himself master of the facts, and made one serious blunder. A 

 fact which had been much dwelt on as confirmatory of Darwin's 

 idea of variation, was that a sheep had been born shortly before 

 in a flock in the North of England, having an addition of one 

 to the vertebrae of the spine. The Bishop was declaring with 

 rhetorical exaggeration that there was hardly any actual evi- 

 dence on Darwin's side. * What have they to bring forward ? ' 

 he exclaimed. * Some rumoured statement about a long-legged 

 sheep.' But he passed on to banter : ' I should like to ask 

 Professor Huxley, who is sitting by me, and is about to tear 

 me to pieces when I have sat down, as to his belief in being 

 descended from an ape. Is it on his grandfather's or his 

 grandmother's side that the ape ancestry comes in ? ' And then 

 taking a graver tone, he asserted in a solemn peroration that 

 Darwin's views were contrary to the revelations of God in the 

 Scriptures. Professor Huxley was unwilling to respond : but 

 he was called for and spoke with his usual incisiveness and 

 with some scorn. * I am here only in the interests of science,' 

 he said, ' and I have not heard anything which can prejudice 

 the case of my august client.' Then after showing how little 

 competent the Bishop was to enter upon the discussion, he 

 touched on the question of Creation. ' You say that develop- 

 ment drives out the Creator. But you assert that God made 

 you: and yet you know that you yourself were originally a 



* Quarterly Review, July 1860. 



