master_!

So far as I know anything about the matters which are here referred
to, the part of this passage which I have italicised is absolutely
untrue. I believe that I am intimately acquainted with all Mr.
Darwin's immediate scientific friends: and I say that no one of them,
nor any other man of science known to me, ever could, or would, have
given such advice to any one--if for no other reason than that, with
the example of the most candid and patient listener to objections that
ever lived fresh in their memories, they could not so grossly have at
once violated their highest duty and dishonoured their friend.

The charge thus brought by "Anonymous" affects the honour and the
probity of men of science; if it is true, we have forfeited all claim
to the confidence of the general public. In my belief it is utterly
false, and its real effect will be to discredit those who are
responsible for it. As is the way with slanders, it has grown by
repetition. "Anonymous" is responsible for the peculiarly offensive
form which it has taken in his hands; but he is not responsible for
originating it. He has evidently been inspired by an article entitled
"A Great Lesson," published in the September number of this Review.
Truly it is "a great lesson," but not quite in the sense intended by
the giver thereof.

In the course of his doubtless well-meant admonitions, the Duke of
Argyll commits himself to a greater number of statements which are
demonstrably incorrect and which any one who ventured to write upon
the subject ought to have known to be incorrect, than I have ever seen
gathered together in so small a space.

I submit a gathering from the rich store for the appreciation of the
public.

First:--

Mr. Murray's new explanation of the structure of coral-reefs
and islands was communicated to the Royal Society of
Edinburgh in 1880, and supported with such a weight of facts
and such a close texture of reasoning, that no serious reply
has ever been attempted (p. 305).

"No serious reply has ever been attempted"! I suppose that the Duke of
Argyll may have heard of Professor Dana, whose years of labour devoted
to corals and coral-reefs when he was naturalist of the American
expedition under Commodore Wilkes, more than forty years ago, have
ever since caused him to be recognised as an authority of the first
rank on such subjects. Now does his Grace know, or does he not know,
that, in the year 1885, Prof