1893. NOTES AND COMMENTS. 15 
One Jacob Horner has written a book called ‘‘ Did a Hen or 
an Egg exist first ? or My Talks with a Sceptic.” One Mr. James 
Crompton has edited it, and the Religious Tract Society have pub- 
lished it in London in 1892. Mr. Jacob Horner says in the preface 
that he has found many of the artisans intelligent, that they are 
fond of an argument, that they want to understand the grounds of 
religion. ‘“‘They like to get hold of a smart book with some dash and 
‘go’ init.” Therefore has this book been written. It is a series of 
dialogues between an uncle and his nephew Tom Rod, ‘‘ who has taken 
it into his head tobe a Freethinker.”’ In each round the stuffing is very 
agreeably knocked out of Tom till, at the end of the book, he writes a 
letter, the purport of which is that he can’t come up to time again until 
he has been refilled. The stuffing is the very worst and oldest we 
have ever seen. It is, in fact, so bad, that it is hardly worth while 
pointing out that the nimble Uncle’s blows are nearly all fouls. Take 
the first round asa sample. For brevity, we take the blows only and 
leave out the feints:—Uncle: Did a Hen or an Egg exist first ? 
Tom objects to question. Uncle explains, and Tom admits that every 
egg comes from a hen, every hen comes from a chicken, and every 
chicken from an egg. Uncle putsin that Sir Charles Lyell says ‘You 
must explain the past by the present.” Tom admits. Uncle: This 
must have held in the past. Tom admits. Therefore, first egg must 
have come from first hen, and so the first hen must have existed before 
the egg, and could not have come from anegg; and so Lyell’s prin- 
ciple breaks down; you can’t explain the past from the present. 
Stuffing badly out. There are 96 pages of this sort of thing. The 
last chapter is very appropriately entitled ‘‘ Where are you going?” 
Our first article this month relates to the life and works of Sir 
Richard Owen, who died on December 18. At the moment of going 
to press we regret to learn that the conspiracy of silence so long pre- 
vailing in certain quarters as to the great anatomist’s writings, 
extended even to the arrangements for his burial. We have to 
record that a public funeral was not even offered, and Sir Richard 
Owen’s remains were interred in Ham Churchyard in the presence of 
a small gathering of personal friends and official representatives of the 
scientific institutions of London. 
