R. Owen 1862a. Richard Owen read his paper on the aye-aye at meetings of the Zoological Society of London held on 14 and 28 January 1862. In his conclusion, Owen endorsed the idea ‘of the origin of species by a continuously operative secondary cause or law’ (ibid., p. 91) but used the case of the aye-aye, as he put it, to ‘test’ some of the ‘different hypotheses, guesses, and beliefs … propounded in explanation of the way of the origin of species’ (ibid., p. 92). After denying the validity of George Louis Leclerc, comte de Buffon’s and Jean Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet de Lamarck’s theories, Owen attacked natural selection in harsh terms, arguing that it was inadequate to explain the origin of the aye-aye, and concluding: ‘Darwin seems to be as far from giving a satisfactory explanation … as Lamarck’ (ibid., p. 96). Owen later repeated the substance of these remarks in a paper with the title ‘On the characters of the aye-aye as a test of the Lamarckian and Darwinian hypotheses of the transmutation and origin of species’ (R. Owen 1862b), which was read before the meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, held at Cambridge in October 1862.

The aye-aye had formerly been classified by some naturalists as a rodent (R. Owen 1862a, pp. 33–7).

Philip Lutley Sclater was secretary of the society (Scherren 1905, pp. 104, 143).

Thomas Henry Huxley and George Busk. See also letter from J. D. Hooker, [25 January 1862] and n. 7.

The reference is probably to Francis Henry Atherley.