the first step, the formation of roots, that is, of general concepts out of single sounds, that is, single percepts, is beyond the power of any animal, except the human animal. Even now it is only the human baby or puppy that can learn to imitate human language, and what is the mere learning of a language, compared with the creation of language, which was the real task of those human animals that became men? In all the arguments which I used in support of my theory—a theory no longer controverted, I believe, by any competent and independent scholar and thinker—I never used a single disrespectful word about Mr. Darwin. But for all that I was supposed to have blasphemed, again not by Mr. Darwin himself, but by those who called themselves his bulldogs. I was actually suspected of having written that notorious article in _The Quarterly Review_ which gave such just offence to Darwin. Darwin himself was above all this, and I have his letter in which he writes, 5th January, 1875:— I have just read the few first pages of your article in _The Contemporary Review_, and I hope that you will permit me to say that neither I, nor my son, ever supposed that you were the author of the review in the Quarterly. You are about the last man in England to whom I should have attributed such a review. I know it was written by Mr. M., and the utterly false and base statements contained in it are worthy of the man. But what was better still, Mr. Darwin gave me an opportunity of discussing the facts and arguments which stood between him and me in a personal interview. Sir John Lubbock took me to see the old philosopher at his place, Down, Beckenham, Kent, and there are few episodes in my life which I value more. I need not describe the simplicity of his house, and the grandeur of the man who had lived and worked in it for so many years. Darwin gave me a hearty welcome, showed me his garden and his flowers, and then took me into his study, and standing leaning against his desk began to examine me. He said at once that personally he was quite ignorant of the science of language, and had taken his facts and opinions chiefly from his friend, Mr. Wedgwood. I had been warned that Darwin could not carry on a serious discussion for more than about ten minutes or a quarter of an hour, as it always brought on his life-long complaint of sickness. I therefore put before him in the shortest way possible the difficulties which prevented me from accepting the theory of animals forming a language out of interjections and sounds of nature. I laid stress on the fact that no animal, except the human animal, had ever made a step towards generalisation of percepts, and towards roots, the real elements of all languages, as signs of such generalised percepts, and I gave him a few illustrations of how our words for one to ten, for father, mother, sun and moon had really and historically been evolved. That man thus formed a real anomaly in the