A LOCAL CENTRE.

(Cave Keynem)

SYNDICS sit in solemn conclave to dispense you woe or weal,

And their doom like Death and Fortune will admit of no

appeal ;

So, on learning you're selected at a Centre to preside, It's your duty to the Syndics to be flushed with proper

pride.

You receive a printed post-card, brief and formal, which denotes

Your appointment to preside at Pembroke Dock or John o' Groat's,

And Instructions' it continues shortly follow,' and you wait

Swollen with a new importance, with new dignity elate.

Then an envelope is sent you. "Please acknowledge its receipt."

'Tis a deluge of Directions. You unpack a monstrous

sheet

Titled Table of the Numbers,' and are told 'To guide

the eye,

Rule a line below the figures of the Centre you supply.'

There's a pamphlet of Instructions to be read like Holy

Writ,

You may break the ten Commandments but you must remember it;

By a microscopic blunder might the Universe be wrecked,

And 'the very greatest trouble is occasioned by neglect.'

In the heaviest of printing, in a type that can't be

missed,

You receive a 'special warning' to be careful with your

list;

The Attendance List is 'Vital.' Angel-tongues could hardly state

The superlative importance of its being accurate.

You must fix the hours for drawing, and must practice days before

Reading fifty words a minute, never less and never

more,

For the Syndicate are anxious' that the Short-hand should be done

As eleven rules direct it on the final page but one.

Take the envelopes provided, Juniors white and Seniors

blue;

They are black with regulations; read those regulations through.

See your Index-Numbers' tally; not a single detail

drop;

Range the answers by their numbers with the lowest on the top.

With your cap upon your forehead, gown and hood upon your back,

You preside and tremble hourly at those awful laws in

black,

And you envy all those urchins (or if girls, you envy

them)

Whom no regulations worry and no Syndicates con

demn.

QUIS TERETIOR?

Memorials, Journal, and Botanical Correspondence of Charles Cardale Babington, M.A, F.R.S, F.E.S., F.S.A., F.G.S., Fellow of St John's College, Cambridge, and Professor of Botany in the University. Cambridge: Macmillan & Bowes, 1897.

THE obituary notice of the late Professor Cardale Babington, which appeared in the Eagle for October 1895 (pp. 62-76), is here reproduced with some slight additions and alterations, the former chiefly in the notes. These, together with a series of "Reminiscences" from the pens of the Rev J. A. Babington, Mr H. R. Francis (the grandson of "Junius "), Professor Cowell, Mrs R. B. Batty, the Bishops of Durham and Gloucester, the Masters of Trinity, Clare, St Catharine's, and Selwyn, Miss Marsh, and Professors Liveing and Newton, and another series of separate tributes in different journals by the two last-named, by Dr Moule, Mr Britten (a contribution of special interest), and others, make up the introductory portion extending to nearly 100 pages. The Journal and Correspondence, with two copious indices, occupy 475 pages more.

The whole volume, a monument of affectionate and devoted labour on the part of the widow, aided by Professor Mayor's vast stores of biographical learning and unwearied research, cannot fail to be read with deep interest by a certain circle, a circle now rapidly diminishing, of those who enjoyed Professor Babington's personal acquaintance and shared his views. To the outer world and the ordinary reader it may, indeed, seem that we have here a collection of materials for a biography rather than a biography proper-a good deal of repetition and something of the trivial. But those for whom the volume is manifestly designed will

probably prefer the actual treatment, with all its minuteness of detail and ipsissima verba; and even those to whom Professor Babington was but a name will have little difficulty in discerning the kindly nature and observant intellect, the sustained industry and sound acquirement, the simple unaffected love of Nature, the ready sympathy with every philanthropic effort, which won the respect of the scientific world and the regard of society.

Professor Babington was, indeed, one in whom local sympathies and personal attachments were exceptionally strong; while he knew his own country as few professors know it. With the exception of a two months' visit to the Channel Islands in 1838, and one to Iceland in 1845, his travels appear to have been limited to the British Isles, a feature in his life which is the more surprising in that, according to Professor Mayor, "he pitied the botanist who, never seeking living plants in their homes, armed with microscope, ransacks their cell and fibre" (p. lxxvi.). His reason for thus limiting his area of observation appears to have been his preference for sure and well-verified conclusions. When urged to visit Switzerland, his reply was, "If I fall into a mistake there, I may never be able to go over the ground again" (p. xviii.). The flora of the higher Alps, of the valleys of the Pyrenees, and of Provence, so varied and interesting, and in later years so accessible,-appears consequently to have been insufficient to tempt him. Nor does an interview which he records in 1838 with Holman, the blind traveller, who made the tour of the world unaccompanied, appear to have suggested to him any like extension of his own field of enquiry. But "few men," says Professor Mayor, "ever rifled, as he did, throughout their length and breadth, England and Wales, Scotland, Ireland, and their satellites, Orkney, Shetland, Achill, Arran, the Hebrides, &c. As a boy he explored the country round Bath.

In manhood, and even to old age, he

spent vacations in tours, several times taking Glasgow students with him, while Professor Balfour led a troop from Edinburgh. His journals resemble Ray's in the even justice meted out to Natural History and Antiquities" (p. xviii.).

With such varied sympathies, it is all the more to his honour that Mr Britten should be able to say of his Manual that "it revolutionized the study of British plants, and gave an impetus to thought and work among British botanists to a degree unequalled by any publication of the century" (p. lxviii.).

Of the bias which throughout ruled his religious views, the same writer gives the following account:

"Brought up in the Evangelical school of thought, which at that time aroused the Established Church from the lethargy into which it had sunk, he, unlike so many of his contemporaries-the two Newmans for instance-never deviated from his early beliefs. As a boy he became acquainted with William Wilberforce, an old friend of his father; at Cambridge as an undergraduate he heard Charles Simeon preach, and later took others to hear him; he attended missionary meetings, where Baptist Noel spoke; he supported Connop Thirlwall in the action which he took as to the admission of dissenters to academical degrees; and in later life-indeed, up to his death-actively supported a number of philanthropic societies, all characterized by a strong Protestant tone. His drawing-room was a centre for meetings of these bodies, and, in conjunction with Mrs Babington, he promoted missionary work both at home and abroad. But all was done quietly and unostentatiously; and, however strong his principles might be, his natural kindliness of heart and consideration for others prevented that aggressive assertion of them which characterizes the less cultured representatives of Protestantism. The various and ever-varying aspects of biblical criticism and the evolution hypothesis never disturbed him" (pp. lxxv.-lxxvi.).