propriety to all and sundry. As soon as the report of this reached Tyndall's ears, he wrote a polite note to the senior secretary declining the honour. Frankly, I think my friend made a mistake. The Council was in no way responsible for the ill-judged and, indeed, indecent proceedings of one of its members; and perhaps it is better to leave an enemy alone than to strike at him with the risk of hurting one's friends. But, having thus sacrificed at the altar of strict justice, I must add that, for a young man starting in the world, to whom such recognition was of great importance, I think it was a good sort of mistake, not likely to do harm by creating too many imitators. As time went on, as the work became harder, and the distractions of life more engrossing, a few of us, who had long been intimate, found we were drifting apart; and, to counteract that tendency, we agreed to dine together once a month. I think, originally, there was some vague notion of associating representatives of each branch of science; at any rate, the nine who eventually came togetherMr. Busk, Dr. Frankland, Dr. Hirst, Sir Joseph Hooker, Sir John Lubbock, Mr. Spencer, Mr. Spottiswoode, Tyndall and myself— could have managed, among us, to contribute most of the articles to a scientific Encyclopædia. At starting, our minds were terribly exercised over the name and constitution of our society. As opinions on this grave matter were no less numerous than the members— indeed more so-we finally accepted the happy suggestion of our mathematicians to call it the x Club; and the proposal of some genius among us, that we should have no rules, save the unwritten law not to have any, was carried by acclamation. Later on, there were attempts to add other members, which at last became wearisome, and had to be arrested by the agreement that no proposition of that kind should be entertained, unless the name of the new member suggested contained all the consonants absent from the names of the old ones. In the lack of Slavonic friends this decision put an end to the possibility of increase. Once in the year there was an outing, to which our respective wives were invited. 3 If I remember rightly, the meetings of the x Club began early in the sixties. They were steadily continued for some twenty years, before our ranks began to thin; and, one by one, 'geistige Naturen,' such as those for which the poet so willingly paid the ferryman, silent but not unregarded, took the vacated places. Tyndall was a constant attendant and a great promoter of vivacious conversation, until his health failed. Two years ago, a deep gloom was cast over 3 Nimm dann Fährmann, Nimm die Miethe Die ich gerne dreifach biete: Zwei, die eben überfuhren, Waren geistige Naturen. I quote from memory; but it is long since I read these verses and more likely than not, the citation errs. one of our meetings by the receipt of a telegram to the effect that he had but few hours to live, and his partial recovery, at that time, was a marvel to all who knew his condition. I believe that the 'x' had the credit of being a sort of scientific caucus, or ring, with some people. In fact, two distinguished scientific colleagues of mine once carried on a conversation (which I gravely ignored) across me, in the smoking room of the Athenæum, to this effect: 'I say, A, do you know anything about the x Club?' 'Oh yes, B, I have heard of it. What do they do?' 'Well, they govern scientific affairs; and really, on the whole, they don't do it badly.' If my good friends could only have been present at a few of our meetings, they would have formed a much less exalted idea of us, and would, I fear, have been much shocked at the sadly frivolous tone of our ordinary conversation. Assuredly Tyndall did not usually help us to be serious. But I must bring these brief and too hurried reminiscences to a close. I believe that ample materials exist, and will be used, for a fitting biography: indeed the putting these materials into autobiographical form was the final piece of work to which Tyndall, with his wife's aid, proposed to devote himself. With the exception of the investigations upon aerial germs, which, though, strictly speaking, they might be continuations and amplifications of Pasteur's labours, yet had a very great effect in putting an end to the tough-lived speculations of the advocates of the so-called 'spontaneous generation' hypothesis, Tyndall's later scientific labours do not lie within the competence of my judgment. On that point, I leave it to contemporary experts to speak; and to time to give the final verdict, which is not always such as contemporaries imagine. Neither do I offer any remark about Tyndall's philosophical, religious and political views; in respect of which my opinions might possibly be impartial; but nobody would believe that they were so. All that I have proposed to myself, in writing these few pages, is to illustrate and emphasise the fact that, in Tyndall, we have all lost a man of rare and strong individuality; one who, by sheer force of character and intellect, without advantages of education or extraneous aid-perhaps, in spite of some peculiarities of that character-made his way to a position, in some ways unique; to a place in the front rank not only of scientific workers, but of writers and speakers. And, on my own account, I have desired to utter a few parting words of affection for the man of pure and high aims, whom I am the better for having known; for the friend, whose sympathy and support were sure, in all the trials and troubles of forty years' wandering through this wilderness of a world. T. H. HUXLEY. THE MANCHESTER SHIP CANAL DURING the hundred years before the introduction of railways, commencing from the year 1720, when the Act for the Mersey and Irwell Navigation was passed, the country was gradually covered with a network of canals which stimulated the rising industries of the country, and which fostered the cotton manufactures of Manchester, the hardware of Birmingham, and the woollen trade of Yorkshire. In 1759 the Duke of Bridgewater made the first canal to Manchester. In 1773 the canal was extended to Runcorn, which diminished the cost of the transport from Liverpool to Manchester by one-half. In 1825 several attempts were made to start a larger canal between Liverpool and Manchester, but for the next fifty years the canals were mostly absorbed by the growing railway power, which allowed them to fall into disuse, and prevented all competition with the railways in the carriage of heavy goods. The small margin of profit in trade which in the last fifteen years has been earned, owing to the keen competition of foreign countries and the high price of railway transport, revived the idea of a ship canal which would make Manchester into a port like Glasgow, and avoid the heavy landing and carting charges of Liverpool. The first movement of a public nature was owing to Mr. Adamson, a practical engineer, a native of Durham, and a man of immense energy. He summoned to a meeting at Didsbury, in June 1882, the friends to the enterprise, and raised a guarantee fund to apply to Parliament for a Bill. This was followed by a public meeting in Manchester in November 1882, which appealed to all classes of the community in Manchester and South Lancashire. The proposal was received enthusiastically by the Lancashire working-men, who saw in the project a prospect of employment and the certainty of the expenditure of the capital in the district. It was strongly opposed by the London and North-Western Railway and the Liverpool Dock Board in the sessions of 1883, 1884, and 1885. The original plan was to form a ship canal between Manchester and Runcorn, and from the latter place to dredge a channel down the tidal estuary of the Mersey. This proposed work gave rise to strenuous opposition in Liverpool, on the ground that it would cause the same accumulation in the |