The British Association has had but one religious dispute this
year, and that was not a very alarming one. A Mr. J. Reddie read what the Record calls a " manly and faithful paper," on the various theories of man's past and present condition, in which he attacked the Darwinian theory of species, and posed it with the -question, " How could the first mammal have possibly been nou- rished in its struggle for existence, if its immediate progenitor were not a mammal?" Some Mr. Toots among the audience suggested that it might have been " brought up by hand," but that was not the answer adopted by the great men of science present, who snubbed Mr. Reddie for his ignorance about the true mature of his subject, Mr. Huxley intimating that the paper .should have been submitted to the department, not of Biology, but Anthropology, and by it should have been rejected; and Sir John Lubbock, who is profound in these things, intimating that Mr. Reddie did not understand at all the Darwinian system, and that there was no conflict between it and religion. Mr. Reddie received a vote of thanks for his paper and the enthusiastic applause of Monday's Record.
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