h Hancock would be a very good man,
and I fancy there would be a feeling against medals to two botanists.
But for whatever Lindley is proposed, I will do my best. We will talk
this over here.

LETTER 45. TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, May 9th [1856].

...With respect to Huxley, I was on the point of speaking to Crawford
and Strezlecki (who will be on Committee of the Athenaeum) when I
bethought me of how Owen would look and what he would say. Cannot you
fancy him, with slow and gentle voice, asking "Will Mr. Crawford tell
me what Mr. Huxley has done, deserving this honour; I only know that
he differs from, and disputes the authority of Cuvier, Ehrenberg, and
Agassiz as of no weight at all." And when I began to tell Mr. Crawford
what to say, I was puzzled, and could refer him only to some excellent
papers in the "Phil. Trans." for which the medal had been awarded. But
I doubt, with an opposing faction, whether this would be considered
enough, for I believe real scientific merit is not thought enough,
without the person is generally well known. Now I want to hear what you
deliberately think on this head: it would be bad to get him proposed and
then rejected; and Owen is very powerful.

LETTER 46. TO J.D. HOOKER. Down [1856].

I have got the Lectures, and have read them. (46/1. The reference is
presumably to the Royal Institution Lectures given in 1854-56. Those
which we have seen--namely, those reprinted in the "Scientific Memoirs,"
Volume I.--"On the Common Plan of Animal Form," page 281; "On certain
Zoological Arguments, etc." page 300; "On Natural History as Knowledge,
Discipline, and Power," page 305, do not seem to us to contain anything
likely to offend; but Falconer's attack in the "Ann. and Mag. of Nat.
Hist." June 1856, on the last-named lecture, shows strong feeling. A
reply by Mr. Huxley appeared in the July number of the same Journal. The
most heretical discussion from a modern standpoint is at page 311, where
he asks how it is conceivable that the bright colours of butterflies and
shells or the elegant forms of Foraminifera can possibly be of service
to their possessors; and it is this which especially struck Darwin,
judging by the pencil notes on his copy of the Lecture.) Though I
believe, as far as my knowledge goes, that Huxley is right, yet I think
his tone very much too vehement, and I have ventured to say so in a
note to Huxley. I had not thought of these lectures in relation to the
Athenaeum (46/2. Mr.