The debate which ensued was in its scope and progress an epitome of the course of life.  Neither place nor council was lacking in dignity.  The debaters were the keenest in the land, the theme they were engaged on the loftiest and most vital.  The high hall of Horne’s house had never beheld an assembly so representative and so varied nor had the old rafters of that establishment ever listened to a language so encyclopaedic.  A gallant scene in truth it made.  Crotthers was there at the foot of the table in his striking Highland garb, his face glowing from the briny airs of the Mull of Galloway.  There too, opposite to him, was Lynch whose countenance bore already the stigmata of early depravity and premature wisdom.  Next the Scotchman was the place assigned to Costello, the eccentric, while at his side was seated in stolid repose the squat form of Madden.  The chair of the resident indeed stood vacant before the hearth but on either flank of it the figure of Bannon in explorer’s kit of tweed shorts and salted cowhide brogues contrasted sharply with the primrose elegance and townbred manners of Malachi Roland St John Mulligan.  Lastly at the head of the board was the young poet who found a refuge from his labours of pedagogy and metaphysical inquisition in the convivial atmosphere of Socratic discussion, while to right and left of him were accommodated the flippant prognosticator, fresh from the hippodrome, and that vigilant wanderer, soiled by the dust of travel and combat and stained by the mire of an indelible dishonour, but from whose steadfast and constant heart no lure or peril or threat or degradation could ever efface the image of that voluptuous loveliness which the inspired pencil of Lafayette has limned for ages yet to come.

It had better be stated here and now at the outset that the perverted transcendentalism to which Mr S. Dedalus’ (Div.  Scep.) contentions would appear to prove him pretty badly addicted runs directly counter to accepted scientific methods.  Science, it cannot be too often repeated, deals with tangible phenomena.  The man of science like the man in the street has to face hardheaded facts that cannot be blinked and explain them as best he can.  There may be, it is true, some questions which science cannot answer—­at present—­such as the first problem submitted by Mr L. Bloom (Pubb.  Canv.) regarding the future determination of sex.  Must we accept the view of Empedocles of Trinacria that the right ovary (the postmenstrual period, assert others) is responsible for the birth of males or are the too long neglected spermatozoa or nemasperms the differentiating factors or is it, as most embryologists incline to opine, such as Culpepper, Spallanzani, Blumenbach, Lusk, Hertwig, Leopold and Valenti, a mixture of both?  This would be tantamount to a cooperation (one of nature’s favourite devices) between the nisus FORMATIVUS of the nemasperm on the one hand and on the other a happily chosen position, SUCCUBITUS Felix of the passive element.