Chapter 6

When I commenced this series of lectures, I did not think it necessary to preface them with a prologue, such as might be expected from a stranger and a foreigner; for during my brief stay in your country, I have found it very hard to believe that a stranger could be possessed of so many friends, and almost harder that a foreigner could express himself in your language in such a way as to be, to all appearance, so readily intelligible. So far as I can judge, that most intelligent, and perhaps, I may add, most singularly active and enterprising body, your press reporters, do not seem to have been deterred by my accent from giving the fullest account of everything that I happen to have said.

But the vessel in which I take my departure to-morrow morning is even now ready to slip her moorings; I awake from my delusion that I am other than a stranger and a foreigner. I am ready to go back to my place and country; but, before doing so, let me, by way of epilogue, tender to you my most hearty thanks for the kind and cordial reception which you have accorded to me; and let me thank you still more for that which is the greatest compliment which can be afforded to any person in my position--the continuous and undisturbed attention which you have bestowed upon the long argument which I have had the honour to lay before you.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: The absence of any keel on the breast-bone and some other osteological peculiarities, observed by Professor Marsh, however, suggest that _Hesperornis_ may be a modification of a less specialised group of birds than that to which these existing aquatic birds belong.]

[Footnote 2: A second specimen, discovered in 1877, and at present in the Berlin museum, shows an excellently preserved skull with teeth; and three digits, all terminated by claws, in the fore limb. 1893.]

[Footnote 3: I use the word "type" because it is highly probable that many forms of _Anchitherium-_like and _Hipparion-_like animals existed in the Miocene and Pliocene epochs, just as many species of the horse tribe exist now, and it is highly improbable that the particular species of _Anchitherium_ or _Hipparion,_ which happen to have been discovered, should be precisely those which have formed part of the direct line of the horse's pedigree.]

[Footnote 4: Since this lecture was delivered, Professor Marsh has discovered a new genus of equine mammals (_Eohippus_) from the lowest Eocene deposits of the West, which corresponds very nearly to this description.--_American Journal of Science,_ November, 1876.]

End of Project Gutenberg's Lectures on Evolution, by Thomas Henry Huxley