Montpellier was honored during the fêtes with the presence of Helmholtz, to whom but for national jealousy would have been confided the part of speaking in the name of the foreign universities. Nevertheless he was the true hero of the occasion, and when at the official reception, on the President of the Republic shaking his hand and saying a few gracious words someone feebly hissed, Helmholtz received in response a perfect ovation of applause. M. Delbœuf met with a congenial spirit in the Professor of Zoology, M. Sabatier, who has a laboratory at Cette. Their views on free-will were in sympathy. They agreed in allowing freedom not only to the superior animals, and to inferior animals and plants, but even to so called inorganic matter. M. Sabatier is a Christian and at the same time a convinced transformist; having arrived at his views from religious considerations. He cited M. Dauriac as saying, “The reign of determinism is not in the objective world; its empire extends itself over nature only after having been exercised over thought. There is no other necessity than that of logic or mathematics.” M. Delbœuf is evidently an “indeterminist” by nature. He heartily sympathised with the students in all their demonstrations of freedom, although one of them assumed a somewhat serious character. Dining in the open air with M. Milhaud the author of an article in the _Revue Philosophique_ on non-Euclidian geometry, he was prepared to talk mathematics. The surroundings were too much for him, however, and in recalling the scene he cries, “To the devil with philosophy and mathematics! I cannot recall what we said; in my remembrances, I see only blooming faces, I hear only the indistinct bursts of gaity.” M. Delbœuf’s sympathetic nature is shown in the fact, which he records, that wild animals in confinement soon become familiar with him.