SCIENCE FROM AN EASY-CHAIR.*
AMONG all the children of science it is probable that none gets more happiness out of his vocation, more reward for his pains, than the good all-round naturalist. The world is his oyster, which be with his knife must open. Nihil Naturae cc se alienum. putat. In these days of special studies, there is danger lest this name of Naturalist should drop out of use : we tend, more shame to us, to think of naturalists as quiet people with dipping-bottles and butterfly-nets, who abounded in the Victorian Age, haunting woods and meadows and pools, the scholar-gipsies of science : we hesitate to believe that men to-day, when every bit of scientific work is divided and sub- divided, can still be all-round naturalists, able to survey with comprehensive view the whole face of the earth, and everything going on at once. But they can : and Sir Ray Lankester is one of the best of them. And this new collection of essays is one of the best of his books ; and it would be hard to over-praise the width of his learning, the sureness of his touch. He seems equally familiar with the ways of germs and glaciers, flowers and elephants, cave-drawings and museums. He enjoys teaching, and we enjoy listening to him. Out of so many delightful object-lessons we are not concerned to say which we like the best ; yet, if a choice bad to be made. it would fall, perhaps, on Fatherless Frogs, and on the Strange History of the Tadpoles of the Sea.
Sir Ray Lankester, as befits a man of science, is happiest in his most "objective" moods ; we most admire him when he is giving off facts as thick and fast as radium gives off whatever it is that radium does give off. When he unbends his mind over affairs of non-science; then we begin to dare to. have opinions of our own. For, example, he is talking, of Easter; and he makes the bold suggestion that hot cross buns, which he seems to assign to Easter, "no doubt have a Christian significance." Prodigious I He is. talking of the physiology or psychology of laughter ; and he says that the smile on La Gioconda.'s face is " the habitual ' leer' of a somewhat wearied sensual woman." Of such a remark one can only say, " C'est impossible de causer avec un monsieur comme ea." Again, when he talks of matters of faith, he would he none the worse for a dose of metaphysic.
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