1879.] NOTES FROM THE PAPERS. 443 



effect from well-established plants, and if growing in deep soil well 

 watered or naturally moist, they last three months in bloom. Pity 

 they are scentless ! 



Annuals of the hardier sorts have had grand opportunities this year 

 of showing their colours and characters. Clarkias, Nemophilas, Linum 

 grandiflorum, Phlox Drummondii, but especially the upright-growing 

 kinds or the prostrate sorts, have been beaten down and rotted by the 

 rains. Tender annuals, such as Asters, Zinnias, and Everlastings, have 

 shared the fate of the sub-tropical bedders, and pushed the hardier an- 

 nuals into consequent prominence, showing what is really best worth 

 growing. There is a richness and variety of colour among annuals which 

 is not approached among any other class of hardy plants, and such a 

 season as the last should arouse gardeners to the claims of the much 

 too neglected annuals of the hardy kinds. 



The Squire's Gardener. 



NOTES FROM THE PAPERS. 



"We wish the members of the British Association could be subjected to a cross- 

 examination— some of them at least. No doubt Dr Allman, Professor Huxley, 

 and others are honest inquirers, but they are only men after all, and may be 

 mistaken in many things. They differ among themselves on that vital subject, 

 "deep-sea slime," for example — "the physical basis of life," according to 

 Professor Huxley, who at least appears determined to nurse his "bantling," 

 as ' Punch' calls it, into life. Dr Allman's presidential address was no doubt 

 intensely interesting to those who study the mystery of life and of creation ; 

 but the question arises in one's mind, " How far are the conclusions and specu- 

 lations of the thinker and investigator to be accepted as true or even probable?" 

 Some years ago the teachings of Darwin and Tyndall created a profound sensa- 

 tion — took people by storm, in fact. The questions were new, or at least re- 

 vived in clearer shape, and the very audacity of the speculations advanced 

 fascinated peoples' minds ; but now a certain reaction seems setting in, and 

 some little impatience is being manifested by the reading public at the strained 

 endeavours made to bottom the mystery of the origin of life and solve the pro- 

 blem by scientific inquiry alone. The wish is too clearly father to the thought. 

 There is much about creation, but nothing about the Creator. If science suc- 

 ceed in accomplishing this — if it were proved to-morrow that mind was the mere 

 product of matter, originating and perishing with the body in which it was 

 manifested — we believe that the feeling in men's minds would be one of pro- 

 found humiliation and grief. A kind of terror seems to pervade the minds 

 of thinking people (not necessarily religious) at the prospect, or rather possi- 

 bility, of science making such a discovery. Anything almost may be done or 

 taught, we suppose, in the name of "science ;" but it cannot be denied that 

 what the British Association teaches would at one time not so far back have 

 been regarded as rank infidelity, or something very like it. The most interest- 

 ing portion of Dr Allman's address is that relating to protoplasm, and its nature 

 and composition. We are tempted to give the extract here for the sake of 



