communication to the Section, "On the final causes of the sexuality of
plants, with particular reference to Mr. Darwin's work on the "Origin of
Species." (My best thanks are due to Mr. F. Darwin for permission to
quote his accounts of the meeting; other citations are from the
"Athenaeum" reports of July 14, 1860.) Huxley was called upon to speak
by the President, but tried to avoid a discussion, on the ground "that a
general audience, in which sentiment would unduly interfere with
intellect, was not the public before which such a discussion should be
carried on."

This consideration, however, did not stop the discussion; it was
continued by Owen. He said he "wished to approach the subject in the
spirit of the philosopher," and declared his "conviction that there were
facts by which the public could come to some conclusion with regard to
the probabilities of the truth of Mr. Darwin's theory." As one of these
facts, he stated that the brain of the gorilla "presented more
differences, as compared with the brain of man, than it did when
compared with the brains of the very lowest and most problematical of
the Quadrumana."

Now this was the very point, as said above, upon which Huxley had made
special investigations during the last two years, with precisely
opposite results, such as, indeed, had been arrived at by previous
investigators. Hereupon he replied, giving these assertions a "direct
and unqualified contradiction," and pledging himself to "justify that
unusual procedure elsewhere,"--a pledge which was amply fulfilled in the
pages of the "Natural History Review" for 1861.

Accordingly it was to him, thus marked out as the champion of the most
debatable theory of evolution, that, two days later, the Bishop