possible, may outweigh all others in importance to the race, is
the rising one of "eugenics,"--the improvement of the human race
by controlling the production of its offspring. No better example
of the drawbacks which our country suffers as a seat of science
can be given than the fact that the beginning of such a science
has been possible only at the seat of a larger body of cultivated
men than our land has yet been able to bring together. Generations
may elapse before the seed sown by Mr. Francis Galton, from which
grew the Eugenic Society, shall bear full fruit in the adoption of
those individual efforts and social regulations necessary to the
propagation of sound and healthy offspring on the part of the
human family. But when this comes about, then indeed will
Professor Lankester's "rebel against Nature" find his independence
acknowledged by the hitherto merciless despot that has decreed
punishment for his treason.

This new branch of science from which so much may be expected is
the offshoot of another, the rapid growth of which illustrates the
rapid invasion of the most important fields of thought by the
methods of exact science. It is only a few years since it was
remarked of Professor Karl Pearson's mathematical investigations
into the laws of heredity, and the biological questions associated
with these laws, that he was working almost alone, because the
biologists did not understand his mathematics, while the
mathematicians were not interested in his biology. Had he not
lived at a great centre of active thought, within the sphere of
influence of the two great universities of England, it is quite
likely that this condition of isolation would have been his to the
end. But, one by one, men were found possessing the skill and
interest in the subject necessary to unite in his work, which now