"Nothing," writes Sir Alexander Arbuthnot, one of the Indian Members of Council, "would have induced me to have been a party to the imposition of restrictions on the press, if I could have foreseen that within a year of the passing of the Vernacular Press Act the Government of India would be embarked on a course which, in my opinion, is as unwise and ill-timed as it is destructive of the reputation for justice upon which the prestige and political supremacy of the British Government in India so greatly depend. And here I must remark that the slight value which in some influential quarters is now attached to the popularity of our rule with our native subjects, has for some time past struck me as a source of grave political danger. _The British Empire in India was not established by a policy of ignoring popular sentiment, and of stigmatizing all views and opinions which are opposed to certain favourite theories, as the views and opinions of foolish people. Nor will our rule be long maintained if such a policy is persisted in._" ROBERT D. OSBORN. ON THE UTILITY TO FLOWERS OF THEIR BEAUTY. The question which I propose to consider in this paper is how far the beauty of blossoms can be accounted for by the utility of this beauty to the plant producing them. It is manifestly only one particular case of a larger inquiry whether the beauty which Nature exhibits can be accounted for by its utility. These questions connect themselves with some of the highest points of the philosophy of the universe. Is the system of the universe intellectual, or is it purely material? Is there an ordering mind, or is there merely blind and struggling matter? Are there final causes as well as material causes, or are there material causes only? These questions have been asked and answered in opposite senses, from the first dawn of philosophy to the present hour; and during all that period of time the battle has been raging--and has spread, too, over the whole realm of Nature. Scarcely any branch of natural science exists which has not furnished materials for at least a skirmish; so that it requires an experienced and impartial eye to be able rightly to understand the true fortunes of the contest over the whole field of battle. True it is, that for every man the question between the two theories has to be decided by somewhat simpler considerations than any such survey. Something in every man seems inevitably to determine him towards either the intellectual or the material theory of things.