ere is a form of protective mimicry whereby the living
thing is like unto its surroundings, and thus escapes its enemy. We find
it in warfare in the use of khaki dress, in white overalls in snow-time,
in other such expedients. But there is also a form of Aggressive Mimicry
in which a deadly thing makes itself look like something innocent, as
the wolf tried to look in "Little Red Riding Hood." "The Germans were
beginning their attack on Haumont. Their front-line skirmishers, to
throw us into confusion, had donned caps which were a faint imitation of
our own, and also provided themselves with Red Cross brassards" (_The
Battle of Verdun._ H. Dugard). Not to be tedious on this point, which
really does not require to be laboured, let me finish with one quotation
from a vivid series of war-pictures. Boyd Cable is writing of men in
the trenches: "Civilised Man, in his latest art of war, has gone back to
be taught one more simple lesson by the beast of the field and the birds
of the air; the armed hosts are hushed and stilled by the passing
air-machine, exactly as the finches and field-mice of hedgerow and ditch
and field are frozen to stillness by the shadow of a hovering hawk, the
beat of its passing wing."

No; an existence passed under conditions of this kind and as the normal
state of affairs is not an existence to be contemplated with equanimity.
We are anxious that science and scientific teaching should be assisted
in every possible way. But let us be quite clear that while science has
much to teach us and we much to learn from her, there are things as to
which she has no message to the world. The Minor Prophets of science are
never tired of advising theologians to keep their hands off science. The
Major Prophets are too busy to occupy themselves with such polemics. But
the theologian is abundantly in his right in saying to the scientific
writer "Hands off morals!" for with morality science has nothing to do.
Let us at any rate avoid that form of kultur which consists in bending
Natural History to the teaching of conduct, uncorrected by any Christian
injunctions to soften its barbarities.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 30: Since these lines were written, this state of
affairs has come to an end and the first Fellow has been
elected for his purely scientific attainments, in the person of
the distinguished geologist, Professor Joly, F.R.S.]

[Footnote 31: It was the late distinguished Provost, Sir John
Mahaffy, a