THE VICTORIAN NATDRALIST. 21 



The Queen's own virtuous court, as compared with that of the 

 Fourth George or William, concerning which Justin M'Carthy 

 says — " The ordinary manners of the society of the court of 

 either had a full flavour, to put it in the softest way, such as 

 a decent tap-room would hardly exhibit in >a time like the 

 present." 



The student of constitutional history will trace the progress 

 made from personal to full constitutional government, and the 

 widened liberties of the people. Others will teach how, during 

 this reign, philosophy, art, and literature have been altogether 

 remoulded. 



While in its decades the world's past history has been re-learnt 

 in the sculptures that have been disinterred from long buried 

 and almost forgotten cities, and from the hieroglpyhics written 

 by strange men in the misty past read in the daylight of the 

 present. But perhaps there has been no more marked progress 

 made than in the realm of science. Indeed modern science is 

 almost the product of the Victorian era. There is not a 

 department of it that has not advanced with giant strides. 



A wondrous picture to paint — the growth of scientific know- 

 ledge. A volume might be written on it. To-night I can only 

 broadly outline a partial sketch. Geology has revealed to us 

 new v/orlds. It was but in 1830 that the first volume of 

 Lyell's " Principles" was published, and at a later date than 

 this a popular work for young people accounted for fossil 

 remains as the result of the Noachean flood. But patient 

 research has revealed to us world after world, and worked out 

 the details, so that what the earth was in the ages that have 

 passed is almost as familiar to us as present lands we only know 

 by description. 



We see, for example, in the Paleozoic era, in the youth of the 

 earth, a flora the world has never witnessed since. As Hugh 

 Miller so graphically puts it — "A youth of dark and tangled 

 forests, of huge pines and stately araucarias of the reed-like 

 calamite, the tall tree-fern, the sculptured sigillaria and the 

 hirsute lepidodendron." Amid this luxuriant growth reptile 

 forms — sauroid batrachians — leave their footprints in the 

 unctuous clay. 



Again we look. Plants and herbs are there, but less 

 luxuriant and conspicuous. But in this secondary period shapes 

 of animal life how weird and strange. " Great dragons, 

 griffins, laithly worms of medieval legend." Terrible things. 

 " Enormous jaws, bristling with pointed teeth, staring eye- 

 sockets a full foot in diameter. Necks that half equal in length 

 the body of the boa-constrictor stretch out from bodies 

 mounted on fins like fish, and furnished with tails like mammals. 



