letter.

[The delivery of the address itself on February 21 (On "Geological
Contemporaneity" ("Collected Essays" 8 292).) is thus described by Sir
Charles Lyell (To a note of whose, proposing a talk over the subject,
Huxley replies on May 5], "I am very glad you find something to think
about in my address. That is the best of all praise.") [("Life and
Letters" 2 356):--

Huxley delivered a brilliant critical discourse on what paleontology has
and has not done, and proved the value of negative evidence, how much
the progressive development system has been pushed too far, how little
can be said in favour of Owen's more generalised types when we go back
to the vertebrata and in vertebrata of remote ages, the persistency of
many forms high and low throughout time, how little we know of the
beginning of life upon the earth, how often events called
contemporaneous in Geology are applied to things which, instead of
coinciding in time, may have happened ten millions of years apart, etc.;
and a masterly sketch comparing the past and present in almost every
class in zoology, and sometimes of botany cited from Hooker, which he
said he had done because it was useful to look into the cellars and see
how much gold there was there, and whether the quantity of bullion
justified such an enormous circulation of paper. I never remember an
address listened to with such applause, though there were many private
protests against some of his bold opinions.

The dinner at Willis's was well attended; I should think eighty or more
present...and late in the evening Huxley made them merry by a sort of
mock-modest speech.]