In 1860 Frederick Wollaston Hutton, a young British geologist, published a review of Charles Darwin's Origin of Species in the Geologist, a popular monthly magazine of geology published in London.' He began by assessing a recent review of the Origin written by Rev. Adam Sedgwick, Woodwardian Professor of Geology at the University of Cambridge. Sedgwick had argued in the Spectator that Darwin's theory was not inductive, and that its "materialism" was "atheistical" and "demoralized." Never one to mince words, even when attacking a pillar of the scientific establishment, Hutton described Sedgwick's criticisms as "gross ironical misrepresentations" and "inflated pomposities." Direct creation, which "wilful pervertors [sic]" of Darwin like Sedgwick preferred, did not explain the origin of species in a scientific sense at all, Hutton insisted; it was "a mere assertion, an evasion of the question, a cloak for ignorance." T. H. Huxley had excoriated special creation in the Westminster Review in almost identical terms, as "verbal hocus-pocus" serving as "a specious mask for our ignorance." Hutton went on to summarize the Darwinian theory in successive installments, concluding that it was unquestionably "4more probable" than any other yet put forward to explain the origin of organic beings. Darwin was delighted, and wrote congratulating the twenty-four-year-old author.2