82 



Shades of Aldrich, and of Whately, of Bacon, and of Euclid, 

 of Newton, and of Butler, can you rest in your graves ? 



The following letters of mine will, I hope, speak for them- 

 selves : 



SCIENCE GONE MAD. 



[FEOM THE "MORNINQ POST," 1881.] 



SIR, One would have thought the " force of folly could no 

 further go " than it should have been gravely propounded to us 

 1 by a President of the British Association, at the annual meeting 

 four or five years since, that a bit of moss adhering unsinged to 

 a red-hot thunderbolt, shattered off from some wrecked world 

 in the illimitable realms of space, had fallen upon this earth 

 millions upon millions of years ago, bringing with it the 

 " promise and potency" of every single species of animated nature, 

 animal and vegetable, of body, soul, and spirit. 



But just now we have had it as gravely told us at York, by 

 the President, Sir John Lubbock, that he and his friends none 

 but they can " see at a glance " that the tiger is striped with 

 reference to the jungle it lives in. 



He has not told us what conceivable connection there can be 

 between the two, nor why, if it be an advantage, Natural 

 Selection has not given the like striping to all the other animals 

 that live in the jungle. 



Next, " We," that is, he and his friem's, and they only 

 11 can see at a glance " that the lion is " sandy like the desert." 



I suppose our grandfathers and grandmothers, and every old 

 woman knew that when they were children ; but here again the 

 President has left us in the dark as to what on earth the 

 statement is to tell us beyond what we already were so well 

 acquainted with. 



Moreover, as a matter of fact, the lion does not live in the 

 sandy desert, but in the dense jungle, amid an infinity of colours 

 of the brightest and darkest hues ; and when he comes out, 

 a roaring after his prey," into the open desert of sand if it be 

 sand for it may just as often l>o >!' day or uny other earth 

 it is at night, when the colour of neither can have any effect 

 whatever, one way or another. Let him go to the old Bible, 



