If Professor Marmion's words of wonder are not already written in the archives of the Royal Society, no doubt they will be in the fullness of time when the minds of men shall have become prepared to receive them.

Here we are mainly concerned with the results which they produced upon his audience.

Certain portions may, however, be properly reproduced here.
When the decorous murmur of applause which greeted the President's closing sentences had died away, and Franklin Marmion went to the reading-desk and unfolded his notes, there was a tense silence of anticipation, and hundreds of pairs of eyes, which had some of the keenest brains in Europe behind them, were converged upon his spare, erect figure and his refined, clear-cut, somewhat sternly-moulded face.
"Mr President, my lords, ladies, and gentlemen," he began, in his quiet, but far-reaching tones.

"The somewhat peculiar title which I have chosen for my lecture was not, I hope I need scarcely say, selected with a view of arousing any but that intelligent curiosity which is always characteristic of such a distinguished audience as that which I have the honour of addressing to-night.

I chose it after somewhat anxious consideration, because I am aware that the bulk of opinion in the world of science strongly insists upon the finality of the axioms of mathematics, and therefore it was with no little hesitancy that I approached such a subject as this.