fossil, Ceratochelys, which was read at the Royal Society on March 31;
while on April 7 he read at the Linnean ("Botany" volume 24 pages
101-124), his paper, "The Gentians: Notes and Queries," which had
sprung from his holiday amusement at Arolla.

Philosophy, however, claimed most of his energies. The campaign begun
in answer to the incursion of Mr. Lilly was continued in the article
"Science and Pseudo-Scientific Realism" ("Collected Essays" 5 59-89)
which appeared in the "Nineteenth Century" for February 1887. The text
for this discourse was the report of a sermon by Canon Liddon, in which
that eminent preacher spoke of catastrophes as the antithesis of
physical law, yet possible inasmuch as a "lower law" may be "suspended"
by the "intervention of a higher," a mode of reasoning which he applied
to the possibility of miracles such as that of Cana.

The man of science was up in arms against this incarnation of abstract
terms, and offered a solemn protest against that modern recrudescence
of ancient realism which speaks of "laws of nature" as though they were
independent entities, agents, and efficient causes of that which
happens, instead of simply our name for observed successions of facts.

Carefully as all personalities had been avoided in this article, it
called forth a lively reply from the Duke of Argyll, rebuking him for
venturing to criticise the preacher, whose name was now brought forward
for the first time, and raising a number of other questions,
philosophical, geological, and biological, to which Huxley rejoined
with some selections from the authentic history of these points in
"Science and Pseudo-Science" ("Nineteenth Century" April 1887,
"Collected Essays" 5 90-125).