So walk it was. He had hardly covered two blocks towards the White House, when he met Dr. M--, the most amiable and accomplished editor of the National Museum, and one of those multi-facetted gentlemen who respond to every scientific thrill around them, and hold in the myriad piled up cells of their cerebral cortex the knowledge, selected, labelled and accessible, of the world. Leacraft knew the Doctor; had indeed consulted him upon a chemical reaction, in the elimination of cadmium from zinc. The Doctor, with genial fervor, grasped his hand, persuasively put his own disengaged hand on Leacraft’s back, and dexterously turned him around with the observation: “You are going the wrong way. Binn reads a paper to-night before the Geographical Society, over at the Museum, on a live subject. It’s about earthquakes and the Panama Canal. The matter has a good deal of present interest. The President may be there. It’s worth your while. Come along.” Leacraft jumped with pleasure, if an Englishman may be said ever to respond so animatedly to a welcome alternative. This met his requirements exactly. He would, in these surroundings and under the stimulation of an intellectual effort, in listening to a lecture which he hoped might possess literary merit as well, quite forget his immediate solicitudes. “It is curious,” resumed Dr. M--, as they directed their steps towards the umbrageous solitudes of the Reservation, “how inevitably many practical questions demand an answer at the hand of geology or physiography, which are however never consulted, and disaster follows. In the spring of 1906 a destructive outbreak of Vesuvius occurred, and much of the ensuing loss of life might have been prevented by reliance upon scientific warnings. Indeed, the loss of life on this last occasion of the volcano’s activity was greatly reduced through the premonitions of its approach by delicate instruments. For that matter, from the beginning, the vulcanologist, at least as soon as such a being was a more or less completed phenomenon in our scientific life, would have pointed out the considerable risk of living on the flanks of that querulous protuberance. But it can hardly be expected, I suppose, that large populations can effect a change in habitation as long as the dangers that threaten them occur at long intervals, and the human fatality of unreasoning trust in luck remains unchanged. Take for instance the case of the village of Torre del Greco, four and a half miles from the foot of Vesuvius. It has been overwhelmed seventeen times, but the inhabitants, the survivors, return after each extinction to renew their futile invocations for another chance.” “I suppose,” queried Leacraft, “that we are to be informed to-night whether the Canal from the scientific point of view is a safe investment?”