When the President of the Republic conceived the plan of entertaining the King of Portugal at the Museum of Natural History there were those who supposed that the Minister of Education would, as a great State official, be called upon to arrange the proceedings. Nothing of the sort was done. It was found that the Minister had no authority in regard to the Museum, which, as an independent State institution, organised and carried out the reception through its own officers. The director and professors received President Fallières and the King, escorted by the troops of the Republic. The garden and buildings were ablaze with light and colour, and a large company assembled to take part in the fête. In the great hall of the museum Becquerel, Moissan, and others showed their most recent discoveries as to radium, artificial diamonds, and such matters to the King; others exhibited new birds and fishes, the okapi and newly-discovered fossils, and briefly explained their history and significance. The King conferred decorations on the scientific staff, and gave friendly acknowledgments to all who had thus sought to gratify his special tastes, and prepared for him a really exceptional gala-demonstration of scientific discovery. The official “middle-men,” who in other countries contrive to divert the honour and emoluments due to men of science, to their own profit, were on this occasion happily kept at a distance. 36. _The Transmission to Offspring of Acquired Qualities_ The cruel fate of Dom Carlos of Portugal naturally enough produced philosophic and thoughtful articles in some of the journals of the day. An able writer told his readers that the “kingly caste” has characteristics peculiar to itself, “which illustrate the Darwinian law.” He does not say what Darwinian law, and I am afraid he would find it difficult to do so. He says that people who for centuries have had their own way (how many kingly families have done so?), who have always lived on good food and never tasted bad wine, and have constantly conversed with interesting people (not usually the chance of princes!) must certainly, if subject to “the laws which govern animal and plant life,” produce well-marked characteristics in their offspring--and he goes on to speak of a fine appetite for food (what he describes is really a morbid condition connected with indigestion) as indigenous to Royalty, and declares that the gift of recognising faces and remembering names is “a faculty cultivated by generations of practice.”