Professor Huxley delivered an amusing address on Saturday to the
Anthropological Section of the Biological Section of the British Association at Dublin, remarking that as in different epochs different portions of the earth's surface have become centres of disturbance, —Antrim, for example, which is now perfectly tranquil, having been a great centre of geological disturbance during the middle of the tertiary epoch,—so, in different epochs of the history of the British Association, the centre of disturbance has shifted from one section to another,—from the Geological Section of thirty years ago, to the Biological Section of the present day. Professor Huxley, however, did not himself contribute much volcanic dis- turbance to the phenomena of his section during the present session of the Association, only remarking that he expected the biological conclusions now looked upon with horror, to become the common- place assumptions of thirty years hence. That depends, we suppose, on what these conclusions are, the sort of data on which they depend, and whether or not they shall in the meantime be verified or abandoned. Biologists are very apt, like other men, to transgress pretty freely the boundaries of their own science, We have no doubt that whatever the great majority of the highest bio- logical authorities may decide as to "the descent of man," will be accepted pretty calmly by the public of the next generation; but we are quite sure that the next generation will not accept, say, the automatic theory of human action, on any data at all resembling those which modern biologists have ventured to bring forward. The area of disturbance would not be in Section D of the British Association, but in Section A of the British mind, if any-enuncia- tion of that monstrous figment of modern biologists were passed off as true science on the people of England.
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