X 
.preface. 
though brief, will be found to contain one of those perfect 
pieces of argument not often met with, and which is itself 
sufficient to enable us to realise how great a loss the Institute 
has sustained by his death. Mr. Hormuzd Rassam con- 
tributes a paper on “ Babylonian Cities,” and Mr. W. St. Chad 
Boscawen has kindly added an appendix giving striking 
instances of the great interest attaching to Mr. RassajPs 
recent discoveries. Mr. Trelawney Saunders gives a paper 
on the recent survey of Western Palestine : the part he has 
taken in the work of the Palestine Exploration Fund, in 
laying down on the maps of that Society the water basins and 
the boundaries and names of the Old and New Testaments, 
has enabled him to show how the cloud of geographical 
Biblical difficulties advanced by many, from the late Bishop 
Colenso downwards, is vanishing before the matter-of-fact 
work of the surveying parties of the Royal Engineers — 
an apt illustration of the remark made in the preface to 
Volume XV., that “ Truth is only in danger from a want of 
knowledge.” Finally, Professor G. G. Stokes, F.R.S., con- 
tributes a paper “ On the Absence of Real Opposition between 
Science and Revelation,” a title which itself is a protest 
against that thoughtless cry to which so many outside the 
Institute are found to give utterance : the paper, coming 
as it does from one who ranks second to none in the scientific 
world, and who has long held the position of Secretary 
to the Royal Society, demands special notice; in it the 
author deals with the more extreme views of the Darwinian 
theory, showing where scientific induction ceases and conjec- 
ture, in default of fact, is called upon to support a theory. 
So important a paper on a subject which has long attracted 
public attention — and upon which some, even in the ranks 
of Science, have spoken with far too little caution — has been 
