“The ever-memorable meeting ... at Oxford in the summer of 1860 saw the first open conflict between the professors of the new faith and the adherents of the old one. Far be it from me to blame those among the latter who honestly stuck to the creed in which they had educated themselves; but my admiration is for the few dauntless men who, without flinching from the unpopularity of their cause, flung themselves in the way of obloquy, and impetuously assaulted the ancient citadel in which the sanctity of ‘species’ was enshrined and worshipped as a palladium. However strongly I myself sympathised with them, I cannot fairly state that the conflict on this occasion was otherwise than a drawn battle; and thus matters stood when in the following year the Association met in this city [Manchester]. That, as I have already said, was a time of ‘slack water.’ But though the ancient beliefs were not much troubled, it was for the last time that they could be said to prevail; and thus I look upon our meeting in Manchester 1861 as a crisis in the history of biology. All the same, the ancient beliefs were not allowed to pass wholly unchallenged; and one thing is especially to be marked--they were challenged by one who was no naturalist at all, by one who was a severe thinker no less than an active worker; one who was generally right in his logic, and never wrong in his instinct; one who, though a politician, was invariably an honest man--I mean the late Professor Fawcett. On this occasion he brought the clearness of his mental vision to bear upon Mr. Darwin’s theory, with the result that Mr. Darwin’s method of investigation was shewn to be strictly in accordance with the rules of deductive philosophy, and to throw light where all was dark before.” Professor Newton specially alluded to this interesting case of Professor Fawcett as illustrating his conviction that the theory of natural selection-- “did not, except in one small point, require a naturalist to think it out and establish its truth.... But in order to see the effect of this principle upon organic life the knowledge--the peculiar knowledge--of the naturalist was required. This was the knowledge of those slight variations which are found in all groups of animals and plants.... Herein lay the triumph of Mr. Darwin and Mr. Wallace. That triumph, however, was not celebrated at Manchester. The question was of such magnitude as to need another year’s incubation, and the crucial struggle came a twelvemonth later when the Association met at Cambridge. The victory of the new doctrine was then declared in a way that none could doubt. I have no inclination to join in the pursuit of the fugitives.”