278 THE ZOOLOGIST. 
eventually emerges tired and unenlightened to ardently seek 
refreshment of another nature. We unhesitatingly say that this 
official obscurantism is no longer possible, and that it is owing to 
chiefs like Sir William Flower that it is dying now and will be 
incapable of resuscitation in the future. A zoological museum 
is capable of a vast esthetic leavening of the masses; a love 
of nature is universal and precedes art. The degradation of 
museums to the present zoological ignorance of the masses is not 
desired, but a levelling up of the latter is the thing needful, 
when natural history may be seen to be a thing of national im- 
portance, and worthy of real national support. At present, as 
Sir William observes, “the largest museum yet erected, with all 
its internal fittings, has not cost so much as a single fully- 
equipped line-of-battle ship, which in a few years may be either 
at the bottom of the sea, or so obsolete in construction as to be. 
worth no more than the materials of which it is made.” 
Pregnant with meaning, not only from its matter, but also by 
its place of delivery, is the paper read before the Church Congress 
in 1888, on “‘the sequence of events which have taken place in 
the universe, to which the term ‘ evolution’ is now commonly 
applied.” Great as was the import of this communication to 
such an audience fifteen years ago, it is more than probable that 
a similar Congress at the present day would appreciate the subject 
as less disturbing and more familiar. Than Sir William Flower 
no better enunciator could have been found of the “ doctrine of 
continuity” to a body of men whose studies lay outside a 
philosophical conception which yet made its presence felt in all 
regions of thought. It required in such an assembly the cautious 
handling of an expert, so that the teaching of the naturalist should 
neither appear as an inerrant dogma, nor, as is sometimes the 
case, a stream of biological assumptions or suggestions. In fact, 
among some zoologists, and other speculative writers of the day, 
an opinion by the author of this book may well be considered, 
‘that natural selection, or survival of the fittest, has, among other 
agencies, played a most important part in the production of the 
present condition of the organic world, and that it is a universally 
acting and beneficent force continually tending towards the per- 
fection of the individual, of the race, and of the whole living 
world.” We have ventured to italicise a few words. 
