‘A better day dawned for biology’: T. J. Parker, New Zealand Huxleyite

Abstract

The self-confessed disciple of Huxley and ardent evolutionist Thomas Jeffery Parker FRS (1850–1897) was in no doubt that ‘a better day dawned’ with the publication of Origin of Species. He expounded as much from the podium in an inaugural lecture to open the University of Otago’s 1881 session. Newly arrived in Dunedin, Parker delivered what quickly became known as the ‘notorious lecture’ in a rhetorical manner worthy of his mentor Huxley. This paper examines the reasons that Parker an English zoologist incurred the wrath of his new compatriots in a largely Scottish Presbyterian settler town. Was it simply a case of speaking ‘great swelling words far beyond the truth’ as one critic observed? The relationships between Parker, Huxley, his father the anatomist William Kitchen Parker FRS (1823–1890), and New Zealand men of science and religion all have their part to play in the story of late-nineteenth century Darwinism down under.