1148 OYSTERS, AND ALL ABOUT THEM. 



and " rented tables." By an annual payment of four hun- 

 dred dollars the right is obtained to send an investigator to 

 work at the station, for ten months of the year. This right 

 has been obtained by universities, governments, and socie- 

 ties, (a) 



Of course I could quote a deal more to that effect, and 

 inform the reader that the Neapolitan Station " ... 

 has quite a little fleet of its own, sail-boats, row-boats, 

 and two steam-launches," &c., &c. ; but I am anxious to 

 show fair-play even in the length of paragraph assigned to 

 each extract. 



I will go further even than that, and show fair-play to 

 our Government by quoting a portion of the Duke of 

 Argyll's reply to Professor Lankester's Lecture, cited a few 

 pages back, in order to show the difference between the 

 "after-dinner" kind of speech, full of promise, of 1883, 

 and the " what we've come to" result in 1890, and to prove 

 therefrom that 



" The best laid schemes o' mice an' men 

 Gang aft agley." 



Now let us hear the Duke's reply. 



" Professor Lankester had also said a few things in 

 respect to Government which were no doubt to some 

 extent true ; but in regard to them also he would put in a 

 word in favour of the class of public men to which he 

 belonged. It had been said that Government in this 

 country hardly ever consulted men of science. That 

 might have been so in former years, but it was not so 

 now ; for, with regard to this very matter of fisheries, it 

 was not many years ago that the Government committed a 

 most important investigation to the hands of his distin- 



(a) The Century Magazine, New Series, Vol. X. 



