was not altogether a strange thing that was asked of them. Ages before, on a rough and vast scale, under conditions of intense heat, or cold, or pressure, or in a microscopic speck of lime or silica just solidified through some abatement in the primal glow, these molecular elements had shown tendencies to combine in curious forms, other than prismatic, with parts arranged in wondrous, if not in perfect, symmetry, as if some special function had required the beautiful order of their disposition.

What can we say then, but that there seems to be displayed in these inorganic forms, and in the frequent repetition of parts with a regularity almost rhythmical, kind of prefigurement of what matter was quite capable of doing, and ready to do, when the delicate balancings of living organisms should demand a fineness of adjustment unknown in inorganic forms, which, so to speak, are but the natural flint implements of azoic ages-the rough sketches, drawn by formative capacities, waiting for finer employment.

I am ready to admit that all this may be regarded as the merest fancy; or, on the other hand, as worthy of further consideration, according to the amount of support it may receive from the phenomena of facts. Accordingly I will endeavour to point out in the few specimens before you some examples of inorganic forms, illustrating tendencies of matter of considerable interest which may repay your attention.

1. Ribbon Jasper, from the Ural Mountains, consisting of quartz and alumina, the red layers coloured by peroxide of iron, and the green possibly by chlorite. In any wise the layers are numerous and sharply distinct.

Lamination, or bedding, on a large scale, is simply, or for the most part, mechanical. Where one bed or stratum has been deposited over another at the bottom of the sea

and subsequently consolidated, raised, and exposed to view more or less inclined, the structure may be as thoroughly mechanical as in a pile of masonry.

But, in the Ribbon Jasper, the green layer can hardly have been laid down of green particles capped by a layer of red particles, and so on alternately, layers of green and red all deposited by gravitation like the sands and shingles of the sea-bottom. We are, I think, compelled to look back to a former condition of the jasper, in which the red and the green particles were all mixed up, and the colour uniform.

Then, in some way which is not understood, like particles sought to like, red joined with red, and green with green, the result being a regularly striped pattern. Another form in which the accumulated red particles are seen as spots or specks, is called Blood-stone.

A still more remarkable tendency in like particles to arrange themselves in definite symmetrical forms is seen in certain examples of granite called Napoleonite. Some unexplained affinity between the dark particles of hornblende, one of the constituents of the granite, has caused them to arrange themselves in rings as perfect as the disc of a nummulite. These discs are not foreign bodies enclosed in a granite paste, they are composed of the granite itself, and, as in the jasper, the "forms" are the result of metamorphic action in the mass of the mineral.

Examples of this kind of action are very numerous and diversified, including the veins in crystalline marbles, the exquisite arborescent or dendritic forms in manganese, the moss-agate, and the mocha-stone.

The waters of the Thames cross a somewhat inclined bed of clay belonging to the Eocene formation, and known as the London-clay. Interspersed in this clay are large flattened spheroidal nodules, which, when sliced transversely, exhibit the curious configurations whence they are termed Turtle

stones. A nucleus is found in some of them, but not in all. In the specimen before us the nucleus is seen to be the section of the stem of a palm tree, the climate of the Thames valley in Eocene days having been sub-tropical. In a second specimen there is no nucleus, a feature which cannot therefore have been essential to the formation of the nodules. These, when first formed, were probably spherical masses, like the globular forms in Napoleonite, their contents then differing from the surrounding clay only in containing more carbonate of lime. Subsequently they became depressed, their longer axis being in the direction of the bedding. In the interior of the nodule, the carbonate of lime diffused in the clay had a tendency to gather itself together. The clay deprived of its lime shrank, leaving cracks radiating from a central opening, all of which became filled up with carbonate of lime, which assumed a prismatic or crystalline structure, with radiating or septarian projections. These concretionary nodules were long regarded as organic fossils, and called Turtle-stones. Similar nodules from the iron-stone clay of the coal measures have been called Beetle-stones. Clearly, they are all to be ranked amongst "inorganic forms."

For a long time it was my impression that mystery came into the world with life, and that the behaviour of lifeless matter could fairly be accounted for in the way of a satisfactory rationale. Inferences drawn from the consideration of a few examples of minerals, recently acquired by the Liverpool Museum, have not diminished my sense of mystery in life, but have thrown back my recognition of mystery into a remote past, before life was upon the earth, if, indeed— following the beautiful train of thought suggested by James Hinton-life is not rather to be regarded as everywhere present, and as old as matter itself.

All inorganic forms are not, however, equally significant. That class of minerals known as crystals, and regarded by

some of our greatest physicists as the nearest approach of dead matter to living organic forms, seems to me to have the least claim of any to such a high distinction. For crystals may be merely aggregations of like particles, and, given the shape of the molecules of which the crystal is composed, the angles and form of the crystal must be what they are. Like as a pedestal built up with bricks, which must have certain relations between its height and side, namely, some multiple of one or more of the dimensions of the brick, and between its angles, which cannot be other than right angles. Nothing can be further from the construction of an organic living form.

On the other hand, the inorganic forms we have had brought before us, whether wrought by metamorphosis through heat, electricity, or chemical affinity, assisted, it may be, by those earth tremors, which are said never to cease in the most tranquil condition of the rocks, these seem to me, far more than crystals, to resemble the results of evolution in living organisms, and to claim our admiration as wrought in darkness, far below the surface of the earth, "in the path which no fowl knoweth, and which the vulture's eye hath not seen." Prefigurements, and more than prefigurements-initiatory stages—in the life and living beauty that should greet the beams of the sun and the intelligence of man, when the world had become tenanted by organic forms.

There are other reflections I might suggest, but you will be gainers if I sum them up in a few words from First Principles, by Herbert Spencer.

66

Though as knowledge approaches its culmination, every unaccountable and seemingly supernatural fact is brought into the category of facts that are accountable or natural; yet, at the same time, all accountable or natural facts are proved to be, in their ultimate genesis, unaccountable and supernatural. And so there arise two

antithetical states of mind, answering to the opposite sides of that existence about which we think. While our consciousness of nature under the one aspect constitutes science, our consciousness of it under the other aspect constitutes religiou."

The Rev. H. H. HIGGINS exhibited two slabs of Septaria, specimen of Beetle Stone, and specimen of Napoleonite from the Museum collections in illustration of his paper.

A short Paper, of which the following is an abstract, was then read.

A PROBLEM IN SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY,

BY MR. R. NICHOLSON.

AFTER referring to the great changes which have taken place in every department of life during the last fifty years; to the rapid increase of population in large towns; and to the deplorable condition of the denizens of the slums, as lately revealed in the newspapers, the writer of the paper proceeded to expound his views as to what could and ought to be done for the moral and material elevation of the masses. He showed that their condition might be greatly ameliorated without making unreasonable demands upon the already overburdened ratepayers if only energetic aud honest management could be ensured, due economy exercised, and the public money not frittered away in schemes which produced no commensurate benefit to the public at large.

He acknowledged that great improvements in court property had been carried out by the Corporation of the city, that much good had been effected by compulsory education, and that such institutions as free libraries, museums, and art galleries had imbued the people with aspirations for a higher and more manly life. But the most effective way, he contended, for raising the people out of their present degradation was to improve the localities and surroundings in which they