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PREFACE.

OME years ago Professor Huxley delivered a lecture at the Royal Institution, entitled "The Coming of Age of the Darwinian Theory," celebrating thereby the momentous natural history discoveries. and events, of which the brilliant discovery of our Biological NEWTON was the parent, nurse, and suggestor.

We desire only to compare great things with small. The present volume also witnesses the "Coming of Age" of SCIENCE-Gossip. For twenty-one years we have endeavoured to meet the tastes of students of natural science-to treat of the discoveries, theories, opinions, and guesses in every department of the same—Ornithological Entomological, Conchological (besides many other ologicals); Botany, in its multitudinous departments; Geology (including Palæontology, Petrology, Lithology, &c.); Microscopy, with its enormous and everincreasing "Cast-net" over every science imaginable; as well as a host of subjects bordering on Astronomy, Meteorology, Chemistry, Folk-lore, and "Notes and Queries" (which latter will be found tolerably encyclopædic).

It has been a loving and loveable work on the part of the Editors. For the first seven years this Magazine had the advantage of the Editorship of Dr. M. C. Cooke-for the last fourteen years, the present Editor has had the enjoyment of personal communication with all, or nearly all, the writers whose papers have appeared in these pages.

A brief interregnum, however, has occurred. Owing to failing health, the Editor was obliged to take as long a holiday as he could. Fortunately, the same able agent who piloted Mr. R. A. Proctor through Australia as a Lecturer on Astronomy, came to England, and made a similar arrangement with the Editor of SCIENCE-GOSSIP.

He went, he lectured, he was generously, and even enthusiastically received by the warm-hearted Australian Colonists in South Australia, Victoria, and New South Wales. He has returned with refreshed mental and bodily vigour.

But, meantime, a well-known correspondent of this magazine, Mr. J. W. Buck, B.Sc., &c., was kind enough to act as Editorial locumtenens, and he performed his work so well that the Editor feels he could not honestly write this Preface to the Annual Volume without recognising it.

The mere fact that we are now chronicling our "Coming of Age," reminds us of the almost numberless competitors for public favour which "twenty-one" years of active Scientific and Literary life in England must necessarily develop. Consequently, it is a proud thing to say, on the part of the Editor, that our Magazine was never so popular, never so much appreciated, never so widely circulated all over the world-in all the eventful years of its history-as it is at the time of publication of its Twenty-first Volume.

Nothing shall be wanting on the part of the Editor to enlarge the sphère, and intensify the operations of this Magazine for the future. His office is smoothed by the generous patience and kindness of his multitudinous Correspondents, who are aware that all their communications cannot appear in the next number-as well as by those patient students who understand the difficulty of answering hard questions in a moment.

We commence a New Era with our next volume. We are taking out a new Lease of Life. The last twenty-one years has seen a good deal of the effect of natural selection. Hosts of magazines with a similar scope to ours have appeared-and dis-appeared. We recognise the vital fact that for a magazine to live, it must prove itself worthy of life!

Our intentions for the next volume are that our literary manhood shall be fully maintained. Will our numerous readers, all over the world, help us to carry out our intentions, by also aiding in the circulation of SCIENCE-GOSSIP ?

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

MALVERN HILLS, DIAGRAMMATIC SEC- Staurosira Harrisonii, var. amphitetras,