1864 DARWIN'S COPLEY MEDAL 367 



ingly indignant at an attempt on the part of the 

 president to discredit the Origin by a side wind : 



JERMYN STKEET, Nov. 4, 1864. 



My DEAR DARWIN I write two lines which are not to 

 be answered, just to say how delighted 1 am at the result 

 of the doings of the Council of the Royal Society yesterday. 

 Many of us were somewhat doubtful of the result, and the 

 more ferocious sort had begun to whet their beaks and 

 sharpen their claws in preparation for taking a very 

 decided course of action had there been any failure of 

 justice this time. But the affair was settled by a splendid 

 majority, and our ruffled feathers are smoothed down. 



Your well-won reputation would not have been lessened 

 by the lack of the Copley, but it would have been an 

 indelible reproach to the Royal Society not to have given 

 it you, and a good many of us had no notion of being 

 made to share that ignominy. 



But quite apart from all these grand public-spirited 

 motives and their results, you ought as a philanthropist to 

 be rejoiced in the great satisfaction the award has given to 

 your troops of friends, to none more than my wife (whom 

 I woke up to tell the news when I got home late last 

 night). Yours ever, T. H. HUXLEY. 



Please remember us kindly to Mrs. Darwin, and make 

 our congratulations to her on owning a Copley medallist. 



JERMYN STREET, Dec. 3, 1864. 



MY DEAR HOOKER I wish you had been at the Anni- 

 versary Meeting and Dinner, because the latter was very 

 pleasant, and the former, to me, very disagreeable. My 

 distrust of Sabine is as you know chronic, and I went 

 determined to keep careful watch on his address, lest some 

 crafty phrase injurious to Darwin should be introduced. 

 My suspicions were justified, the only part of the address 

 to Darwin written by Sabine himself containing the 

 following passage : 



