The annual meeting of the British Association was opened on
Wednesday at Newcastle with an address from Professor Flower, which is not so interesting as such addresses usually are. It is devoted mainly to the management of museums, and gives us the results rather of the Professor's great experience than of his scientific thoughts. The essence of his address is that a museum, if it is to instruct, must choose its curator well. We, at least, find the concluding remarks more in- teresting, in which the Professor, with his vast knowledge of natural history, while inclining towards the Darwinian ex- planation of the world, declares that the true scientific attitude is " a suspended judgment," that we know little or nothing of the utility of habits, instincts, or parts of animals which may seem useless, and that, although patient research and observation may remove much of our ignorance, a, frank confession of it is the best present course. Professor Flower even endorses Sir John Lubbock's idea, that the field of inquiry is limitless, and that there may be " fifty other senses as different from ours as sound is from sight ; and even within the boundaries of our own senses there may be endless sounds which we cannot hear, and colours as different as red from green of which we have no conception. These and a thousand other questions remain, for solution. The familiar world which surrounds us may be a totally different place to other animals. To them it may be full of music which we cannot hear, of colour which we cannot see, of sensations which we cannot conceive."• That is true scientific humility.
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