I find only two occasions on which he wrote to the “Times” this year; one, when the crusade was begun to capture the Board Schools of London for sectarianism, and it was suggested that, when on the first School Board, he had approved of some such definite dogmatic teaching.  This he set right at once in the following letter of April 28, with which may be compared the letter to Lord Farrer of November 6, 1894:—­]

In a leading article of your issue to-day you state, with perfect accuracy, that I supported the arrangement respecting religious instruction agreed to by the London School Board in 1871, and hitherto undisturbed.  But you go on to say that “the persons who framed the rule” intended it to include definite teaching of such theological dogmas as the Incarnation.

I cannot say what may have been in the minds of the framers of the rule; but, assuredly, if I had dreamed that any such interpretation could fairly be put upon it, I should have opposed the arrangement to the best of my ability.

In fact, a year before the rule was framed I wrote an article in the “Contemporary Review”, entitled “The Board Schools—­what they can do, and what they may do,” in which I argued that the terms of the Education Act excluded such teaching as it is now proposed to include.  And I supported my contention by the following citation from a speech delivered by Mr. Forster at the Birkbeck Institution in 1870:—­

“I have the fullest confidence that in the reading and explaining of the Bible, what the children will be taught will be the great truths of Christian life and conduct, which all of us desire they should know, and that no effort will be made to cram into their poor little minds, theological dogmas which their tender age prevents them from understanding.”

[The other was on a lighter, but equally perennial point of interest, being nothing less than the Sea Serpent.  In the “Times” of January 11, he writes, that while there is no reason against a fifty-foot serpent existing as in Cretaceous seas, still the evidence for its existence is entirely inconclusive.  He goes on to tell how a scientific friend’s statement once almost convinced him until he read the quartermaster’s deposition, which was supposed to corroborate it.  The details made the circumstances alleged by the former impossible, and on pointing this out, he heard no more of the story, which was a good example of the mixing up of observations with conclusions drawn from them.

And on the following day he replies to another such detailed story:—­]

Admiral Mellersh says, “I saw a huge snake, at least 18 feet long,” and I have no doubt he believes he is simply stating a matter of fact.  Yet his assertion involves a hypothesis of the truth of which I venture to be exceedingly doubtful.  How does he know that what he saw was a snake?  The neighbourhood of a creature of this kind, within axe-stroke, is hardly conducive to calm scientific investigation, and I can answer for it that the discrimination of genuine sea-snakes in their native element from long-bodied fish is not always easy.  Further, that “back fin” troubles me; looks, if I may say so, very fishy.