[During this period of special work at the anthropological side of the Evolution theory, Huxley made two important contributions to the general question.
As secretary of the Geological Society, the duty of delivering the anniversary address in 1862 fell to him in the absence of the president, Leonard Horner, who had been driven by ill-health to winter in Italy.
The object at which he aimed appears from the postscript of a brief note of February 19, 1862, to Hooker:—]
I am writing the body of the address, and I am going to criticise Paleontological doctrines in general in a way that will flutter their nerves considerable.
Darwin is met everywhere with—Oh this is opposed to paleontology, or that is opposed to paleontology—and I mean to turn round and ask, "Now, messieurs les Paleontologues, what the devil DO you really know?"
I have not changed sex, although the postscript is longer than the 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.]
Jermyn Street, May 6, 1862.