xii POLITICAL LIFE 283 



coal measures." Then he added, " But do you know, 

 some little time ago I was invited by our good friend 

 Sir Edward Watkin to be present at the opening of 

 the Metropolitan Railroad, and at one of the stations, 

 the Mansion House Station, I think, we had an excel- 

 lent collation. The work was not quite finished, and I 

 noticed, as I sat at the luncheon table, the round boulders 

 which occur in the London clay. I then said to Sir 

 Edward, who is always very kind, ' Would you be so 

 good as to ask one of the men to take one of those 

 boulders that I see out of the clay and to break it in 

 two, for I am most anxious to see what is in the centre ? ' 

 And this was done ; and now what do you think I found 

 in the centre of the boulder ? a hard concretionary 

 mass. Is not that very strange ? " So I tried to explain 

 to him that these boulders were first formed by a 

 deposit round some central harder object. He seemed 

 to think it was very remarkable ; and then he concluded 

 by the observation : " Don't you think that both in the 

 case of the coal measure and in the case of the boulder 

 that the central hard portion holds the softer portions 

 together, just exactly as our bones hold together the 

 softer parts of the animal body ? What do you think 

 of that?" Here I felt astonished, as I recognised that 

 my host belonged to the bygone age of Oken and the 

 " Natur Philosophen " in his views of physical science. 

 These men insisted upon analogies existing between 

 the inorganic and the organic world ; the crystal had 

 its analogy in the flower, and so forth. 



A propos of the question of the influence of the 

 study of science, it occurs to me to mention that 

 many years ago a gentleman called upon me in Man- 

 chester and asked me what I thought would be the 

 effect of their studies in practical chemistry upon the 

 hundred young men who were working in my laboratory. 



