LITERARY WORK, ETC. 219 



The lecturer stated that, however extreme and even out- 

 lageous these views would appear to many of his audience, 

 he could assure them from personal knowledge, that they rep- 

 resented the opinions of almost all of the poets of whom he had 

 spoken. 



After the lecture Dr. Lunn protested against the idea that 

 poets were generally agnostic or even irreligious, referring to 

 Milton, Browning, Tennyson, and many others ; but Mr. Le 

 Gallienne had said nothing about these — the major poets — 

 and he assured me afterwards that he was well acquainted 

 with all the poets he had referred to, and that every one of them 

 were more or less pronounced agnostics. This seems to me 

 an interesting fact. 



My own lecture was mainly devoted to a sketch of the chief 

 great advances of science during the century, but I added to it 

 a kind of set-off in discoveries which had been rejected and 

 errors which had been upheld, referring to phrenology as one 

 of the first class, and vaccination as one of the second. There 

 were, of course, in such a place as Davos, many doctors among 

 the audience, and they signified their disapproval in the usual 

 way ; but I assured them that some of them would certainly live 

 to see the time when the whole medical profession would 

 acknowledge vaccination to be a great delusion. 



Although Davos has no grand alpine scenery immediately 

 around it, there are many delightful walks through woods full 

 of flowers and ferns, alpine meadows with gentians and pri- 

 mulas, and stony passes from which the snow had just re- 

 treated. On the Strela pass, about eight thousand feet, I 

 found some charming little alpines I had not seen before, 

 among them the very dwarf Viola alpina, growing among 

 stones, the leaves hardly visible and the comparatively large 

 flat flowers of a very deep blue-purple, with a large orange- 

 yellow eye. This is peculiar to the Eastern Alps, and seems 

 difficult to cultivate, as few dealers have it in their lists. I 

 sent home a few plants, but could not succeed in keeping them 

 alive. 



On leaving Davos, I made my way across to Adelboden, 

 where my wife and daughter, with some friends, were staying. 



