New," Scott points out that we can arrange a series of forms, chosen from Palæozoic species, illustrating how by slow degrees the primary conducting strands in the stems of various extinct types, such as exist in their typical form in the genus Lyginodendron, have gradually disappeared; they were rendered practically useless as waterchannels when the plants acquired the power of forming a broad cylinder of secondary conducting tissue. In one case, Megaloxylon, another member of the Cycadofilices, we find an intermedi. ate stage in which the older primary wood, instead of ceasing to exist. adapted itself to a new rôle by increasing the breadth and reducing the length of its elements, thus enabling them to act as storage-reservoirs, since in their primary function as conducting tubes they had been superseded by the more recently acquired or newer type of woody tissue. It would occupy too much space to pursue these questions further; my aim is to emphasize the need for minute comparative investigations of extinct and recent plants, in order to demonstrate how the fossil forms supply connecting links, enabling us to understand the manner in which structural features have been gradually modified and how by slow and almost imperceptible stages the modern style of stem-architecture has been reached.

One reflection that is forced upon us by a retrospective survey of the vegetation of successive ages is the frequent extinction of types which held for a time a prominent place and then disappeared without leaving any direct descendants. In the forests of the Coal period there was a plant, Sphenophyllum, which in external form, and probably in habit, bore a strong resemblance to the Goose-grass of our hedgerows. This genus was a member of the dominant group of those days and one which must be

placed in a special division of the Vascular Cryptogams; it has recently been pointed out that there are certain points of contact between Sphenophyllum and the isolated Southern genus Tmesipteris, one of the more aberrant forms among surviving Lycopods. In the genus Cheirostrobus, previously referred to, Scott has clearly demonstrated a common meeting-ground for features shared between Sphenophyllum, Lycopods and Equisetums. Numerous other instances of plant-types, both from Palæozoic and Mesozoic rocks, might be mentioned which teach us some of the secrets of Nature's method of working, and in their combination of characters shed a welcome light on the obscure relationship of modern groups.

Another impression which we derive from a comprehensive glance through the records of the rocks is that there have been periods during which the progress of plant-life was marked by a slow and hardly perceptible advance, while on the other hand there were phases of evolution in which the developmental forces were accelerated. Making due allowance for the nature of the records, we are tempted to believe that the advent of the Mesozoic era was characterized by comparatively rapid changes in the facies of the vegetation; there was an alteration in the balance of power in the vegetable kingdom, similar to that which occurred at a later stage when Angiosperms began their victorious march.

There are good reasons for the view that new types of plant-life originated on a vast southern Continent of which fragments are left in Australia, India, South Africa and South America. It

is now generally admitted that we have ample evidence pointing to a lowering of temperature in southern latitudes at the close of the Carboniferous period, a change in physical conditions well calculated to give an im

petus to organic evolution, and one likely to play an important share in the production of new types, which gradually migrated to the north. Another factor, which rapidly made itself felt, we may recognize in the appearance of the Cycads and allied forms which held almost universal sway in the Mesozoic era. It may not be unreasonable to suggest a parallel between the advance of Cycads and the spread of Angiosperms as two of the prime causes for the relatively sudden alteration in the facies of plant-life at two distinct stages in the world's history. There must have been irregularities in the rate of change from type to type, and it is in entire accord with Darwin's view that during periods of great physical change and altered conditions there should be a rapid spread of new forms of life. If we endeavor to keep before us the farreaching influence of new and vigorous competitors in the struggle for life, the stimulus given to development by physical changes, and above all the necessarily imperfect records of the rocks, we have no reason to regard the apparent revolutions in the plantworld to which I have specially alluded, as in any sense an adverse fact for evolutionists to explain.

In the course of his indictment against Natural Selection, Mr. Johnston quotes Professor Huxley as one who "always held serious doubts" as to the supreme efficiency of Natural Selection, and he lays stress on Huxley's saying that "the primary and direct evidence in favor of Evolution can be furnished only by Palæontology." An extract from a letter from Huxley to Darwin, written in 1880, affords a fair commentary on these two quotations: "I hope," he wrote, "you do not imagine because I had nothing to say about 'Natural Selection' that I am at all weak of faith on that article. On the contrary, I

live in hope that as palæontologists work more and more in the manner of that 'second Daniel come to judgment,' that wise young man, M. Filhol, we shall arrive at a crushing accumulation of evidence in that direction also." 5 "The real truth is," writes Mr. Johnston, "the proved influence of Natural Selection is being written down as less and less every day." As Hazlitt said, "A sweeping unqualified assertion ends all controversy, and sets opinion at rest"; it is possible that the daring dogmatism of the above statement may carry conviction to those who are not in a position to inquire into the question for themselves.

Before venturing to attack Darwin's theory, a theory which has stood the test of time, one would naturally expect an author not merely to make himself acquainted with articles in Chambers' Encyclopædia, but to take the trouble to read original contributions to palæontological science, or at least modern text-books. But a careful study of the article, "What about Natural Selection?" or at least such parts of it as refer to the botanical evidence, leads me to unhesitatingly assert that the author's obiter dicta on these matters cannot be allowed the weight of convictions founded on an intimate acquaintance with the available data. Such statements as "Cycads must have evolved from the ferns through that new fossil group. the Cycadofilices, of which traces are abundant, but none so early as the Carboniferous limestone" do not inspire us with confidence. The choice of Fontaine's "generalized" dicotyledonous leaves, as one of the best examples of fossil-plant evidence affording any insight into the origin of species, points to a want of judgment in weighing evidence. The reference to the occurrence of "simple yet fully differentiated Club Mosses (Sigillaria) "Huxley's Life," II., p. 13.

and Calamites" in Lower Silurian rocks by the banks of the Ohio, confirms our opinion of the writer's rashness in attempting to lay under contribution the vegetation of the past as a hostile witness to Natural Selection. Recent research among the tattered sheets in the herbaria of the rocks has given striking confirmation to DarThe Contemporary Review.

win's statement "that the extinct forms of life help to fill up the intervals between existing genera, families, and orders." We may fairly demand more substantial arguments before dismissing Natural Selection as an effete and discredited factor in the evolution of life.

A. C. Seward.

The children at a kindergarten in India were being asked the names of their favorite Kings and Queens. Akbar, William the Conqueror, Richard the Lion-hearted, were the answers of the mass. "King Edward the Seventh," said one small voice, with a flourish. "What can you know about King Edward?" asked his teacher, to try him. The child drew himself up to the full height of his four years. "He is my King!" was his answer, and surely a conclusive one. The child who described Henry VIII. as a "professional widower" was an English production. Then there was “Jack," writing to his aunt in England his sixyear-old impressions of India,-"Here we have a larger moon, and we keep it better polished!" And N, who upon being told he was getting quite old (he had had two birthdays), replied: "Indeed I am not; I am almost new!" When still "almost new" Nwas found one day sitting solemnly on a chair, kicking his legs up and down. "What is it in me that wants to go for a walk?" he asked. "Not my legs, for I could move them here." Ethel and Marjory went with their mother to the Stores, to buy golf-clubs for their father, who was sweltering in the Indian plains. "Ethel," said Marjory, "are these for our Father which art

"A

in heaven, or our father which art in India?" "Hush, Marjory!" was the answer. "Don't you know that our Father which art in heaven only plays Sunday games!" [I cannot help inserting here the remark of one of my acquaintances to whom I take all my stories, because her absence of any sense of humor prompts her to inimitable comment. "Ah!" she said on being told the above, "I suppose, then, the mother was married twice!"] Granville said his prayers at bed-time, but refused to do so in the morning. fellow must be a fool if he can't take care of himself in the day!" "Make Tom a good boy," said another fiveyear-old; adding, "Do you hear that, Tom?" And-"Wait, Lord, while I kick Tom!" was another of his interjections. Elsie's sayings were numerous. "I wish I could bathe in chapters," was one extracted on a shivering winter's night. When she was about eight she hated being called of a morning, and thought of a way out of the necessity. "Trespissurs on my dreams shall be prosekuted!" was the announcement in her largest writing found pinned on to her coverlet. The spelling was what Elsie herself would have called "pathetic!" "Some one once told me I spelt on the pathetic system," she confided to me! It was

wrote of her sweet little "ginny-pigs!" "King of Kings and Lord of Lords," was in the Sunday hymn. "Do you know Whom that means, dear?" asked the mother. "Let me see; now, would it be hearts or clubs?"

Sometimes the comment on younger brothers and sisters is delicious. "Why does not baby speak?" puzzled one small girl. Later, dissatisfied with her mother's answer, she produced her own. "I know: the things that baby saw in God's house before she came to live with us were so wonderful that she cannot speak about them. She's got to be quiet-till she's forgotten!" "Baby's broken a hole in the sky and come through," was the explanation of another, aged three. Jack, rather older (aged eight), was a student of "ruling passions." "Oh! mother's been getting bargains again!" he said in all good faith upon being shown his twin baby sisters.

Enid and Edith were at a loss for a game. "Let's play at being at home," said Enid. "We'll have a day."-"But what does that mean?" begged Edith. "What is a day?"-"Oh! don't be stupid," said Enid. "All fashionable people have 'days.' God's day is Sunday, and mother's is Tuesday!" "Is the gentleman in the sailor hat an Apostle?" was the comment of another child on the saint in a church window.

From a Bishop who had been preaching in his mitre I have my next story. It is the conversation of two small children, who sat just below the pulpit. The poor Bishop could not help overhearing their little whisperings. "He's a King!" said one.-"He isn't!" was the contemptuous reply; "this is Church."-"He is!"-"No! he isn't!""Well, then, he's a clown!" "I don't like Christian soldiers, I like barrat soldiers better," said Geoffrey, whose

The Spectator.

brother's rendering of his nightly hymn was original:

May thine Angels spread,
Their white tails above me,
Over Ruby's bed!

A learned friend of mine sends me, as marginalia to the story, a photograph of the ancient "death-angel" from the Lycian Harpy tomb. The tails are beautifully marked; and I am sure Ruby was an archæologist in some previous existence. "God would not send a Flood now," said Frances comfortably, after hearing the Noah story. "And why?" asked her mother. "Oh! He knows that every one can swim now; it would not be any good!" "Please let's re-range about Christmas presents," said Rosamond to me last December.-"But don't you want a surprise?" I asked.-"Oh no!" she replied, "I've tried surprises, and they're only disappoints!" (Seven seems too early to grow blasé, even in this century.) Joan is just nine years old. "What is she like?" she asked of her mother about an expected guest. "But really, Joan, I can't tell what you want to know."-"Well! what does she look like? Is she old or young? What does she think about?" Her mother attempted a description. "I know." said Joan, summing her up, quite satisfied; "black net and sequins!" Another "summary" one retails with tears at one's heart, for it is many years now since Ralph, aged seven, was called to enter the mists of death. It was his last Easter, and he begged hard to be allowed to go to church as usual. He was taken home after the Passover lesson. "And you could not understand that, my boy; you might have come out before," said his mother. "Oh, no!" said Ralph, "I loved it; it was a beautiful story: the blood, and the Lamband, they were all safe!"

Cornelia Sorabji.

Mr. Legge, in an essay on dreams, in the Academy' cites Alfred Maury's remarkable dream "that he was about to be guillotined, and woke up to find that a lath from the head of the bed had fallen and was pressing upon his neck." Maury's dream was much more curious than one might guess from this compressed version. His mother was in the room, watching him as he slept; what she saw was a lath, or something of that kind, fall and touch Maury's neck, when he instantly awoke. But his dream had comprised a whole chapter from the Reign of Terror. He dreamed that he was suspected, arraigned before the Revolutionary tribunal, tried, condemned, and taken to execution, the whole affair occupying, at least, many hours. But, as Maury saw, what happened was this: he felt, in sleep, the touch on his neck. His sleeping self asked itself, "What is this?" and replied by the long and (he says) coherent dreammyth, containing vivid experiences occupying, if not days, at least a great portion of a day. And through all these emotions Maury passed in the fraction of a second between the touch on his neck and his complete return to waking consciousness. The interest of this dream, and others, lies in the dramatic power of the sleeping self, which actually constructs, stages, and acts out a long story explanatory of a real sensation, literally "in the twinkling of an eye." Manifestly the dream self is a dramatist of force far beyond the power of the waking self. Shakespeare could not have constructed that plot, in the given time, when awake. In short, the dreaming self, like the soul in Mr. Matthew Arnold's poem,

1 The Living Age, October 11, 1902.

Did not know the bond of Time Nor feel the manacles of Space,

a fact which donne à penser as to the nature of space and time, "mere hallucinations," as the late Lord Bute once remarked to myself. The inferences may lead us far away beyond the ordinary philosophy of dreaming. Many people are curious on this matter, but few or none seem to read Karl du Prel's Philosophy of Mysticism, of which there is an excellent English translation. M. du Prel enlarged freely on this matter of "dream as dramatist," and on "real and ideal time." Parts of his commentary, and some of his facts, are "tough," but his book is most interesting. Naturally we must remember that we all, unconsciously, "edit" our dreams, and are apt to fill up and omit- "eik and pare," as the old Scots phrase runs.

Occasionally there are witnesses to some of the facts, like Madame Maury. Thus, a young lady of my friends lately danced most of the night at a ball, and next day went on a short railway journey. She was reading Lavengro in the train; she fell asleep, and dreamed that she was boating on a lake well known to her. She saw her sister drowning in the lake, tied a rope to the rowlock, and threw the loose end to her sister. On this she awoke, and found that, when she thought she was throwing a rope to a drowning sister, she had really flung Lavengro (a pretty heavy volume) at the head of a lady sitting opposite her -a perfect stranger! Explanations to a railway-carriageful of people followed.

Mr. Legge quotes M. Lorain to the effect that clever people who use their brains a good deal dream cleverer