'The _Origin_ was sent to Mr Lucas, one of the staff of the _Times_ writers at that time, in what was I suppose the ordinary course of business. Mr Lucas, though an excellent journalist, ... was as innocent of any knowledge of science as a babe, and bewailed himself to an acquaintance on having to deal with such a book. Whereupon, he was recommended to ask me to get him out of the difficulty, and he applied to me accordingly, explaining, however, that it would be necessary for him formally to adopt anything I might be disposed to write, by prefacing it with two or three paragraphs of his own.' 'I was too anxious to seize upon the opportunity thus offered of giving the book a fair chance with the multitudinous readers of the _Times_, to make any difficulty about conditions; and being then very full of the subject, I wrote the article faster, I think, than I ever wrote anything in my life, and sent it to Mr Lucas who duly prefixed his opening sentences[137].' Many journalists, however, were less conscientious than Mr Lucas, and most of the other early notices of the book were pretty equally divided between undiscriminating praise of it as a novelty and foolish reprobations of its 'wickedness.' It was fortunate that Darwin followed the strong advice given to him by Lyell, and did not attempt to reply to the adverse criticisms; for the only effect of these was to arouse curiosity and thus to increase the circulation of the book. Although Darwin had wisely avoided the danger of exciting prejudice against his work by definitely applying the theory of Natural Selection to the case of man--simply remarking, in order to avoid the charge of concealing his views, that 'light would be thrown on the origin of man and his history'--yet friends and foes alike at once drew what was the necessary corollary from the theory. It is as amusing, as it is surprising at the present day, to recall the storm of prejudice which was excited. At the British Association Meeting at Oxford in 1860, after an American professor had indignantly asked the question, 'Are we a fortuitous concourse of atoms?' as a comment on Darwin's views, Dr Samuel Wilberforce, the Bishop of Oxford, ended a clever but flippant attack on the _Origin_ by enquiring of Huxley, who was present as Darwin's champion, if it 'was through his grandfather or his grandmother that he claimed his descent from a monkey?' Huxley made the famous and well-deserved retort:--