348 A Century of /Science 



by which the " Monday Lectureship " jumps from 

 a statement about the reproduction of a lobster's 

 claw to the inference that a man may be born 

 without a father. It reminds one of that worthy 

 clergyman who introduced a scathing sermon on a 

 new-fangled variety of ladies' headdress by the 

 appropriate text, " Top-knot come down ! " On 

 being reminded by one of his deacons that the full 

 verse seemed to read, " Let him that is upon the 

 housetop not come down," the pastor boldly justi- 

 fied his abridgment on the ground that any par- 

 ticular collocation of words in Scripture is as au- 

 thoritative as any other, since all parts of the Bible 

 are equally inspired. Perhaps there are some who 

 would justify Mr. Cook's peculiar principle of 

 abridgment on the familiar ground that the end 

 sanctifies the means, and that if a statement seems 

 helpful to "the truth" in general, it is no matter 

 whether the statement itself is true or not. 



Enough of this. If we were to go through with 

 these volumes in detail, we should find little else 

 but misrepresentations of facts, misconceptions of 

 principles, and floods of tawdry rhetoric, of which 

 the specimens here quoted are quite sufficient to 

 illustrate the lecturer's " fundamental method of 

 procedure." If I have treated him somewhat 

 lightly, it is because there is nothing in his matter 



