important part in his own magnificent theory, to the exclusion, to a great degree, of the well-accredited facts and established doctrines of science." Scientific gentlemen respond The Reverend Adam Sedgwick, the Woodwardian Professor of Geology at Cambridge, was popular and well regarded, having recently strongly defended the new geology against the Reverend Sir William Cockburn, a Scriptural geologist. He turned down several invitations to review Vestiges, pleading lack of time, but in March read it closely and on 6 April discussed with other leading clergymen the "rank materialism" of the book "against which work he & all other scientific men are indignant". He thought the "hasty jumping to conclusions" indicated a female author. In a letter to Charles Lyell about "the foul book", he expressed his disgust: "If the book be true, the labours of sober induction are in vain; religion is a lie; human law is a mass of folly, and a base injustice; morality is moonshine; our labours for the black people of Africa were works of madmen; and man and woman are only better beasts! .... I cannot but think the work is from a woman's pen, it is so well dressed and so graceful in its externals. I do not think the 'beast man' could have done this part so well." On 10 April he contacted Macvey Napier, editor of the Edinburgh Review, who quickly accepted the offer. Sedgwick was rather disorganised and had not written a review before. To save time batches of his writing were typeset on arrival, so one part was being printed "while the other part was still uncoiling from my brain in Cambridge." Napier did not insist on the usual concise review, but as it was still arriving in mid May stopped it at what became 85 pages, one of the longest reviews the quarterly ever published. The British Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting was held at Cambridge in June 1845, giving its president John Herschel a platform to counter Vestiges. His presidential address contrasted the "sound and thoughtful and sobering discipline" of the scientific brotherhood with the "over-hasty generalisation" and "pure speculation" of the unnamed book. He had a cold and his words were badly delivered, but they appeared in newspapers across the country as its most prestigious man of science dismissing the book. For the rest of the week attacks on Vestiges continued. In the geology