[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.]

Jermyn Street, May 6, 1862.

My dear Darwin,

I was very glad to get your note about my address.  I profess to be a great stoic, you know, but there are some people from whom I am glad to get a pat on the back.  Still I am not quite content with that, and I want to know what you think of the argument—­whether you agree with what I say about contemporaneity or not, and whether you are prepared to admit—­as I think your views compel you to do—­that the whole Geological Record is only the skimmings of the pot of life.

Furthermore, I want you to chuckle with me over the notion I find a great many people entertain—­that the address is dead against your views.  The fact being, as they will by and by wake up [to] see that yours is the only hypothesis which is not negatived by the facts,—­one of its great merits being that it allows not only of indefinite standing still, but of indefinite retrogression.

I am going to try to work the whole argument into an intelligible form for the general public as a chapter in my forthcoming “Evidence” (one half of which I am happy to say is now written) ["Evidence as to Man’s Place in Nature."], so I shall be very glad of any criticisms or hints.

Since I saw you—­indeed, from the following Tuesday onwards—­I have amused myself by spending ten days or so in bed.  I had an unaccountable prostration of strength which they called influenza, but which, I believe, was nothing but some obstruction in the liver.