236 THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY 



Other labours, not destined to be accomplished, were 

 also in contemplation, especially a full consideration of 

 post-Darwinian speculation, and a series of Working- 

 Men's Lectures on the Bible. 



1894. 



Huxley attended the British Association in August, 

 held this year at Oxford, the presidential address being 

 given by Lord Salisbury, Chancellor of the University. 

 A very special interest naturally attached to the occasion, 

 seeing that the last meeting held in the same centre was 

 in 1 860, when the then Bishop of Oxford so fiercely 

 attacked the theory of evolution. As Huxley himself 

 says, in a letter to Professor Lewis Campbell (dated 

 August 18, 1894) : — 



" It was very curious to me to sit there and hear the 

 Chancellor of the University accept, as a matter of course, the 

 doctrines for which the Bishop of Oxford coarsely anathematized 

 us thirty-four years earlier. E pur si muove" (Life, ii, p. 379)- 



Lord Salisbury's address, however, was far from being 

 satisfactory in some respects, and implied that post- 

 Darwinian speculation rendered the theory of evolution 

 of problematic validity. Huxley's particular task was to 

 second the vote of thanks proposed by Lord Kelvin, and 

 how this was done is described by Professor Henry F. 

 Osborn (an old pupil), in his Memorial Tribute to Thomas 

 H. Huxley (Trans. Acad. Soc, New York, xv) : — 



" His situation was an unenviable one. He had to thank an 

 ex-Prime Minister of England and present Chancellor of Oxford 

 University for an address, the sentiments of which were directly 

 against those he himself had been maintaining for twenty-five 

 years. . . . Lord Kelvin (Sir William Thomson) one of the 

 most distinguished living physicists, first moved the vote of 



