time of spawning, etc. The season may be lost in that alone. Then (in the case of an animal) when you have got the eggs or spawn, they have to be sedulously tended to keep them alive, and day by day, even hour by hour, must be subjected to the closest scrutiny. Eggs perhaps the one-twentieth of an inch in diameter have to be hardened, imbedded, and cut by a razor each into 50 slices, and then clarified and studied. A few eggs each day have to be so treated for three weeks or a month. Then the sections must be drawn, and the history put together as a whole. Clearly it must be a very slow cess to accumulate results.'

pro

Here again, it may be urged, all this is a marvellous case of self-denying devotion to an abstract pursuit, but where does it touch the interest of the community? Nature I again reply is one. The general problem of development is to find out how and in what relation to each other the different parts of the organism make their appearance. The study of normal growth, for example, has been found to throw unexpected light on abnormal growths such as cancer and tumcurs. Do the cells of such a structure belong to the skin or to deeper layers? And embryological science helps to an answer.

Then all that relates to pisciculture goes hand in hand with the study of development; practical expedients that are favourable to the one are the key to success in the other.

But the whole subject forms the basis for investigating the question of Heredity, which is of immense practical importance. By the minute study of embry

ology we begin to see some glimmerings of light, with the hope held out to us of seeing darkly ere long, and clearly in the distant future. The question of social subordination to biological laws is already settled in matters of sanitation. What is the fact that the deathrate of London has fallen from 80 per 1,000 in the latter half of the seventeenth to 24 per 1,000 in the latter half of the nineteenth century but a practical expression of that subordination ? And though it is a delicate matter to touch upon, may not hereditary disease come to be considered as preventible as, for instance, typhoid fever, and as much, therefore, within the province of the statesman ?

It is not to be supposed that the enthusiasm of the community will be as great for all branches of science as that of its special votaries. But with this kind of plant you cannot isolate and cultivate a single branch. The whole tree must be sedulously encouraged if fruit is to be borne by it in due season. Every biological investigation resolves itself in its ultimate analysis into the study of some attitude of protoplasm-a thing of which it is impossible, having regard to our common interest, ever to know too much.

I have hardly left myself space to deal with matters on which I may claim to speak with a more special authority. But with regard to the plant world the argument is still the same. Microscopists studied vibrios and bacteria before they were known to be

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fraught with the awful interest that attaches to the congeneric organisms which play such a fatal part in the contagious diseases by which mankind is ravaged. The researches of Dr. Klein on smallpox open up an entirely new path to their investigation. Innumerable kinds of fungi destroy different kinds of cultivated plants. Our likelihood of effectively grappling with these enemies directly depends on our knowledge of their course of life. The fungus which produces the potato-disease is still imperfectly known, and the Royal Agricultural Society, with a laudable desire to remedy that deficiency, in the absence of any laboratory in this country where such investigations are prosecuted, was compelled to have recourse to that of the University of Strassburg, and placed 100l. at the disposal of Professor De Bary, in order to have the subject completely investigated.

Our knowledge of the life-history of the lower plants is in every direction most incomplete. What has been said on this head already with regard to animals, might, totidem verbis, be repeated here. The laws which govern variation might be investigated most favourably amongst plants, since they are so amenable to the artificial restraints of cultivation, and run through the course of their lives with such rapidity as to afford within a comparatively short space of time a large number of generations. Then, again, the whole subject of vegetable nutrition, and indeed every branch of

vegetable physiology, though in a promising, must be regarded as only in a nascent state.

Everywhere the harvest of new knowledge is maturing and ripening. England alone is loath to send labourers to reap it.

X.

ON THE PRESENT RELATIONS BETWEEN CLASSICAL RESEARCH AND CLASSICAL EDUCATION IN ENGLAND.

By HENRY NETTLESHIP, M.A., Fellow and Tutor of Corpus Christi College, Oxford; late Assistant Master at Harrow School.

No acquisition of modern times is more remarkable than the nearer realisation of the unity of spirit which pervades all research. Among a multitude of labourers in various fields of knowledge, there is a consciousness of a common aim, a common method, a common inspiration. This consciousness is no mere abstraction, but a living reality; the active pursuit of truth is a bond as strong as the bond of charity. And, while the widelyspreading love of truth is forming a new element of union among men, the objects of knowledge themselves are discovering more and more of their inner harmonies as their laws are read and verified by fresh experience. No branch of knowledge can now be seriously studied in isolation, or without a view to its actual or possible connexion with other branches, and the ultimate discovery of the simple principles underlying them all.