The Bishop spoke thus "for full half an hour with inimitable spirit,
emptiness and unfairness." "In a light, scoffing tone, florid and
fluent, he assured us there was nothing in the idea of evolution;
rock-pigeons were what rock-pigeons had always been. Then, turning to
his antagonist with a smiling insolence, he begged to know, was it
through his grandfather or his grandmother that he claimed his descent
from a monkey?" ("Reminiscences of a Grandmother," "Macmillan's
Magazine," October 1898. Professor Farrar thinks this version of what
the Bishop said is slightly inaccurate. His impression is that the words
actually used seemed at the moment flippant and unscientific rather than
insolent, vulgar, or personal. The Bishop, he writes, "had been talking
of the perpetuity of species of Birds; and then, denying a fortiori the
derivation of the species Man from Ape, he rhetorically invoked the aid
of FEELING, and said, 'If any one were to be willing to trace his
descent through an ape as his GRANDFATHER, would he be willing to trace
his descent similarly on the side of his GRANDMOTHER?' His false humour
was an attempt to arouse the antipathy about degrading WOMAN to the
quadrumana. Your father's reply showed there was vulgarity as well as
folly in the Bishop's words; and the impression distinctly was, that the
Bishop's party, as they left the room, felt abashed, and recognised the
Bishop had forgotten to behave like a perfect gentleman.")

This was the fatal mistake of his speech. Huxley instantly grasped the
tactical advantage which the descent to personalities gave him. He
turned to Sir Benjamin Brodie, who was sitting beside him, and
emphatically striking his hand upon his knee, exclaimed,] "The Lord hath
delivered him into mine hands." [The bearing of the exclamation did not
dawn upon Sir Benjamin until after Huxley had completed his "forcible
and eloquent" answer to the scientific part of the Bishop's argument,