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in plants, and to which the name of ' protoplasm ' has been given — 

 a substance described as structureless, semi-fluid, contractUe, or 

 ' glairy.' One remarkable feature in his address was his unresei-ved 

 adhesion to the discovery by Huxley of the existence, in the bed of 

 the Atlantic, of vast masses of slimy matter endowed with life, and 

 consisting of protoplasm, to which he had given the name of 

 Bathybius. Huxley himself, with the frankness and candour that 

 characterise him, had acknowledged that the want of success of the 

 explorers of the •' Challenger,' in finding similar deposits, had 

 shaken hi? convictions, and that the appearance of life in the matter 

 brought home by the observers of the ' Porcupine ' might be a 

 result of chemical action. Professor Allman was (;vidently of 

 opinion that this admission was more than was required by the 

 merely negative evidence of the failure of the ' Challenger ' to find 

 any trace of bathybius — a condition of living matter the most 

 rudimental it is possible to conceive. 



" Professor Allman's lecture has been happily summed up in an 

 epigram by Dr. John Evans : — 



' 'Twixt life and consciousness the chasm 

 Cannot be bridged by protoplasm ; 

 All flesh is grass, yet chlorophyll 

 Can All-man's functions not fulfil.' " 



The Peesident proceeded to comment at length on the Address 

 of Dr. Tylor, as President of the Anthropological Department, and 

 on the Report of the Anthropometric Committee. 



" The question of race is one that has always presented diffi- 

 culties ; and Dr. Paul Topinard (of Paris) has lately published a 

 paper on the subject in the Revue d'Anthropologie, which indicates 

 that his views have undergone some change upon it. Race, he 

 justly says, is a word which has several different meanings, as used 

 in Science and as used in popular language, and it is very possible 

 that we mislead ourselves by confusing these together. He groups 

 the views held on this question by various anthropologists into three 

 broad classes : — the first, that of the older monogenists, that man is 

 of one species, and that races are varieties of it ; the second, that 

 of the older polygenists, that races are so distinct that they may be 

 grouped into different species ; and a third view, which he attributes 



