My dear Huxley

Of course I cannot say that it is mathematically certain that in reading from a printed page I did not through inadvertence read “excluded” for omitted, but it is most violently improbable that I should have made such a change and the President, knowing as he must his own words, would be sure to have noticed it.¹ It does not seem to me at all improbable that in your recollection of what was rapidly read you should have substituted for one word another which you deem of similar import.

However you agree to accept “omitted” and the question arises whether this correctly describes what passed.

Now by the rules of the R.S. the award of the medals is as you know made by the Council alone. Therefore the “we” cannot mean the Royal Society at large but the Council. The question then is, are the words “We have expressly omitted” a correct account of what passed.²

The proposal of the Copley Medal to Darwin was as you know made by Falconer who rested his claims on other grounds.³ The work on the origin of species was however too important to be passed sub silentio, and therefore he gave reasons for not including that among the grounds of the award. When the matter thus came formally before the Council the President from the Chair used words of this general purport:— “Then we are to understand that the work on the origin of species is not included among the grounds of the award of the Copley Medal to M^r Darwin”   This was assented to,⁴ and the Council considered and voted on M^r Darwin’s claims accordingly.

Now there are two modes of omission, by silence, or by express mention. If the naming of a work by the proposer of a medal and saying why he did not included it, followed by a formal statement made from the Chair and assented to that work was not included among M^r. Darwin’s claims for the Medal be not an “express” omission I don’t know what is.

But what are M^r Darwin and his friends to understand by this “express” omission? That the Council have passed any censure on the book? No such thing; but only that while the Council were not prepared, or at least were not asked, to reward it with the Copley Medal, it was too important to be passed sub silentio, and had to be mentioned in order to guard the Council from being committed to it.

Yours very truly | G. G. Stokes