at form of Madden. The chair of the resident indeed stood vacant
before the hearth but on either flank of it the figure of Bannon in
explorer's kit of tweed shorts and salted cowhide brogues contrasted
sharply with the primrose elegance and townbred manners of Malachi
Roland St John Mulligan. Lastly at the head of the board was the young
poet who found a refuge from his labours of pedagogy and metaphysical
inquisition in the convivial atmosphere of Socratic discussion, while
to right and left of him were accommodated the flippant prognosticator,
fresh from the hippodrome, and that vigilant wanderer, soiled by the
dust of travel and combat and stained by the mire of an indelible
dishonour, but from whose steadfast and constant heart no lure or peril
or threat or degradation could ever efface the image of that voluptuous
loveliness which the inspired pencil of Lafayette has limned for ages
yet to come.

It had better be stated here and now at the outset that the perverted
transcendentalism to which Mr S. Dedalus' (Div. Scep.) contentions
would appear to prove him pretty badly addicted runs directly counter to
accepted scientific methods. Science, it cannot be too often repeated,
deals with tangible phenomena. The man of science like the man in the
street has to face hardheaded facts that cannot be blinked and explain
them as best he can. There may be, it is true, some questions which
science cannot answer--at present--such as the first problem submitted
by Mr L. Bloom (Pubb. Canv.) regarding the future determination of sex.
Must we accept the view of Empedocles of Trinacria that the right ovary
(the postmenstrual period, assert others) is responsible for the birth
of males or are the too long neglected spermatozoa or nemasperms the
differentiating factors or is it, as most embryologists incline to
opine, such as Culpepper, Spallanzani, Blumenbach, Lusk, Hertwig,
Leopold and Valenti, a mixture of both? This would be tantamount to
a cooperation (one of nature's favourite devices) between the _nisus
formativus_ of the nemasperm on the one hand and on the other a happily
chosen position, _succubitus felix_ of the passive element. The other
problem raised by the same inquirer is scarcely less vital: infant
mortality. It is interesting because, as he pertinently remarks, we
are all born in the same way but we all die in different ways. Mr M.
Mulligan (Hyg. et Eug. Doc.) blames the sanitary conditions in which
our greylunged cit