446 CHAELES CARDALE BABINGTON. 



NOTES ON CORRESPONDENCE. 



Memoirs of some of Babington's botanical friends may be seen in B.N.B. and 

 in Boase M.E.B. A work of great value, which might serve as a model to a 

 historian of scholarship, is : A Biographical Index of British and Irish Botany, 

 Compiled by James Britten, F.L.S., and G. S. Boulter, F.L.S., F.G.S. London, 

 West, Newman and Co. 1893. 8vo. 



See Journal of Botany (and in Vols. i. — iii. Annals of Botany) for obituaries 

 year by year. Thus of those named in the Notes on Journal, Vol. 27 of the J.B. 

 (1889) commemorates M. J. Berkeley (p. 305) and John Ball (p. 365) ; Vol. 31 

 (1893) Leonard Blomefield, sometime Jenyns (p. 320). 



P. 302. Olcen's book. Babington's sober judgement shews to great advantage 

 here. With firm hand he steers between the Scylla of blind faith in Lankester 

 and the Charybdis of gloomy doubt in Balfour. To the one, the new oracle reveals 

 pure truth, ' nothing wrong ' in thousands of utterances ; to the other, it is a voice 

 of ' blasphemy.' " I think I have some idea of his argument. Many expressions 

 in it are so worded as to lead to a bad interpretation of them, but in my opinion 



none such is intended by the author I think that very few of the members 



will read many pages of it. Many doubts were expressed at Council meetings as 

 to its being an advisable publication. I was, and am, one of the doubters. • • • • 

 I am sorry that you have withdrawn from the Council and local secretaryship. 

 It will, however, be a good warning to the London members of the Council to 

 mind what they are about in future." Not guilty, but don't do it again. One who, 

 like Psalms 19 and 119, viewed God's works and word, not through dim glasses, High 

 Priests of ' Science ' or of Tradition, but with direct vision, was little troubled by 

 jarring sects ' scientific ' or theological. 



What is it? a learned man 

 Could give it a clumsy name. 

 Let bim name it who can. 

 The beauty would be the same. 



Sir Richard Owen's article ' Oken' in the Encycl. Brit, casts no light on Balfour's 

 view. More helpful is Mansel's learned and witty Phrontisterion : 

 Where reared by Oken's plastic hands 

 The Eternal Nothing of Nature stands, 

 And Theology sits on her throne of pride 

 As Arithmetic personified ; 



And the hodmandod crawls, in its shell confined, 

 A symbol exalted of slumbering mind. 



See Erdmann, Geschichte der neueren Philosophie, iii. 2, .539 — 583. 



Forty years after the stir in the Ray Society, Arnold Lang writes (allgem. deutsche 

 Biographic, xxiv. 1887, 216—226) : 



P. 220. "In philosophy 'Nothing' was to Oken the highest principle, the 



Absolute The multiplicity of things arose from the working of Water, Aii-, 



and Ether or Fire, upon Earth. Therefore there are, and can be, only three King- 

 doms of Nature." Earth + Water, or Earth + Air, or Earth + Fire = Minerals. 

 Earth + Water + Air = Plants. Earth + Water + Air + Ether = Animals. 



P. 225. " The special parts of Oken's Natural History contain little or no new 

 materials, and few new thoughts ; they are however clearly expressed, and present 



a diligent summary of the observations made up to date To the wildness of 



his physical speculations is largely due the miscredit into which general contempla- 

 tions fell. Hence, until the 'fifties, botanists and zoologists confined themselves 

 almost exclusively to so-called exact researches of detail." 



Cosmogonies and Anthropogonies have been much in fashion during this century. 

 See the Bcal-Encykl. fur prot. Theologie under Schopfung, where the resemblance 

 of some of these guesses to Indian and Greek legends is pointed out. A hundred 

 years hence they may supply matter for an introduction to Ovid's Metamorphoses. 



J. E. B. M. 



