1860 CANON FREMANTLE'S ACCOUNT 269 



which mostly drowned the end of the sentence] " to dis- 

 credit and crush humble seekers after truth, I hesitate 

 what answer to make." 



No doubt your father's words were better than these, 

 and they gained effect from his clear, deliberate utterance, 

 but in outline and in scale this represents truly what was 

 said. 



After the commotion was over, " some voices called 

 for Hooker, and his name having been handed up, 

 the President invited him to give his view of the 

 theory from the Botanical side. This he did, demon- 

 strating that the Bishop, by his own showing, had 

 never grasped the principles of the ' Origin,' and that 

 he was absolutely ignorant of the elements of botanical 

 science. The Bishop made no reply, and the meeting 

 broke up." l 



ACCOUNT OF THE OXFORD MEETING by the REV. W. 

 H. FREMANTLE (in Charles Darwin, his Life Told, 

 &c., 1892, p. 238). 



The Bishop of Oxford attacked Darwin, at first play- 

 fully, but at last in grim earnest. It was known that the 

 Bishop had written an article against Darwin in the last 

 Quarterly Review ; 2 it was also rumoured that Professor 

 Owen had been staying at Cuddesdon and had primed the 

 Bishop, who was to act as mouthpiece to the great Palaeonto- 

 logist, 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 varia- 



1 Life of Darwin, I.e. 

 2 It appeared in the ensuing number for July. 



