134 MISS MARION I. NEWBIGIN. 
It should be carefully noted that those who have the 
scientific mood do not venture to think that they can give 
explanations of things, if by that is meant ultimate explana- 
tion. The word ultimate does not occur in the scientific 
dictionary. The biologist draws cheques, but they are 
all endorsed protoplasm; the physicist’s bills are the 
accepted, but only on the credit of the ubiquitous ether 
or the mighty atom ; and these are conceptual hypotheses. 
Science describes, analyses, discloses chains of sequence, 
gives mediate explanations perhaps, but no ultimate explana- 
tions. The man of scientific mood sees certain fractions 
of reality which interest him; he seeks to see them as 
clearly as may be, to put them in an ordered rational 
-series; to reduce them to simpler terms, to find their 
common denominator. Apart from his science he may 
cherish the belief that some day the common denominator 
may turn out to be the same as the philosopher’s greatest 
common measure. J mean, as Fouillée says, that science 
is a broken mirror whose reflections of reality philosophy 
has to reunite. 
THE LIFE OF THE SEA-SHORE. 
An Address delivered before the Scottish Natural History 
Society, July 6, 1899. 
By Marton I. Newsicin, D.Se. (Lond. ). 
THERE are perhaps few localities where the extraordinary 
abundance of life is more striking than on the sea-shore. 
From the birds which circle and cry overhead to the count- 
less myriads of sandhoppers which spring up at every foot- 
step, there seems to be life everywhere, life in a careless 
and wanton profusion, the secret of which is known to the 
sea alone. Nowhere else, in our climate at least, can one 
