ACCOUNT OF THE OXFORD MEETING BY THE REVEREND W.H. FREEMANTLE (in
"Charles Darwin, his Life Told" etc. 1892 page 238.)

The Bishop of Oxford attacked Darwin, at first playfully, but at last in
grim earnest. It was known that the Bishop had written an article
against Darwin in the last "Quarterly Review" (It appeared in the
ensuing number for July.); it was also rumoured that Professor Owen had
been staying in Cuddesdon and had primed the Bishop, who was to act as
mouthpiece to the great Paleontologist, 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 variation, was that a sheep had been
born shortly before in a flock in the North of England, having an
addition of one to the vertebrae of the spine. The Bishop was declaring
with rhetorical exaggeration that there was hardly any evidence on
Darwin's side. "What have they to bring forward?" he exclaimed. "Some
rumoured statement about a long-legged sheep." But he passed on to
banter: "I should like to ask Professor Huxley, who is sitting by me,
and is about to tear me to pieces when I have sat down, as to his belief
in being descended from an ape. Is it on his grandfather's or his
grandmother's side that the ape ancestry comes in?" And then taking a
graver tone, he asserted, in a solemn peroration, that Darwin's views
were contrary to the revelation of God in the Scriptures. Professor
Huxley was unwilling to respond: but he was called for, and spoke with
his usual incisiveness and with some scorn:] "I am here only in the
interests of science," [he said,] "and I have not heard anything which
can prejudice the case of my august client." [Then after showing how
little competent the Bishop was to enter upon the discussion, he touched
on the question of Creation.] "You say that development drives out the