essential condition of national well-being, it was absolutely necessary that the people should know something of, and be in some sort of sympathy with, the methods and conditions of scientific thought. In supplying this need, Professor Tyndall's greatest work has been done. . . . He has, by his lectures and his books, brought the democracy into touch with scientific research. . . . He has done, perhaps, more than any other living man to compel those who regard knowledge as valuable only in so far as it is immediately useful, to admit that the seed which is sown in the laboratory often produces the most abundant harvest in the workshop." The "Times" thinks it not too much to say that the thirty-four years of Tyndall's occupancy of his professorship "have effected more than almost any other contemporary influence to diffuse a love of scientific knowledge among large classes of the community, and to prepare them for the acceptance of many ideas which, at least in their earliest forms, appeared to run counter to others which had been universally received."
We do not suppose that these thoughts are new in England; only that they have just now been given formal, authoritative expression. With reference to Professor Tyndall, they are familiar in the United States, where they were spoken fourteen years ago at a similar banquet given to him at the close of his lectures here; a banquet which was parallel in its significance and the diversified representative character of its company with the one in London. On this occasion. Professor Henry wrote that Professor Tyndall "is not only a distinguished laborer in the line of original research, but also one of the best living expounders of scientific principles. His books. . . have done more to give precise and definite knowledge of the principles of the sciences of which they treat than any other series of works ever published." Professor Safford, of the Dearborn Observatory, said he had shown us "how to employ extensive and deep researches in conveying a maximum of instruction to the world at large"; and Professor Jeffries Wyman desired to honor him "for his many contributions to physical science, and for his strict devotion to the exact methods of bringing scientific truths to light."
Among other features of the addresses at the London dinner deserving special notice are the Earl of Derby's admission that the gains we have derived from the applications of science—great as they are—are as nothing compared with those accruing from the acceptance of scientific habits of thought; and his significant assertion that British politicians have done the best they could for science—"they have let it alone; they have not corrupted it by their intrigues, nor vulgarized it by their squabbles; and they being what they are, and science being what it is, that is probably the best service they could have rendered it."
HONEST LIFE-INSURANCE.
Under the title of "Lawsuit or Legacy," we published, in the July "Monthly," an article reflecting some-what sharply on the one-sidedness which still survives in many life-insurance contracts; and also alleging that it is not an uncommon practice for the companies, taking advantage of some qualifying technicality in their policies, to resist the payment of death-claims by menacing or openly attacking the character of the deceased. "Millions of dollars," says the writer of the article, "have been withheld from rightful heirs by threats of an exposure—the more vague, the more frightful—of unsuspected crimes and misdeeds of the beloved dead"; and, again, that "thousands of cases, never known to the public, have been compromised, and hundreds of heart-aches and unjust sus-
