;Tke Scottish' Na'turatist. 207 



investigations of science. Science opens up whole worlds of un- 

 seen wonders in the midst Of the common familiar objects of our 

 daily life. It brings us into contact on every side with elements 

 and forces that do not come within the sphere of our ordinary 

 perception. By the aid of the telescope, it sounds the profound 

 abysses of the sky, brings to view stars that lie far beyond the 

 reach of the naked eye, and resolves seeming wisps of dim 

 vapoury light that float on the face of the midnight heavens into 

 firmaments of suns. By the help of the microscope, it reveals to 

 us a universe of minute and most wonderful life in a wayside pool 

 or a heap of fallen leaves in a drop of water or a particle of 

 dust. The great value of science is this that it corrects the 

 evidence of our senses : shows us that the true essence and mean- 

 ing of all things is hidden from our natural, unaided sight ; and 

 bids us look, as we are commanded by the highiest and most 

 solemn of all sanctions, not at the things which are seen, but at 

 the things which are unseen. The correlation of forms as well as 

 forces throughout the universe teaches us also the great lesson 

 that we cannot isolate any department of knowledge from the 

 great whole, however desirable it may be to do so for special and 

 more accurate study. As every road led to Rome, and every 

 stream leads to the sea, so every branch of study leads to the 

 great ocean of truth. The smallest moss, or lichen, or fungus, is 

 a key that opens the gate of the great temple of knowledge, and 

 conducts us to its inmost shrine. We can say of it what Tennyson 

 says of the flower : 



" Little flower, if I could understand 

 What you are, root and all and all in all 

 .1 should know what God and man is." 



May I venture one other delicate hint in conclusion ? Our 

 Society reminds me somewhat of Schwendener's famous theory 

 of the origin of a lichen. We all know that the erudite German 

 does not grant an autonomous existence to a lichen any more 

 than we are disposed to allow it to Ireland. It constitutes a 

 vegetable Great Britain, composed of the union of a fungus and 

 a green alga, the fungus parasitic upon the alga, and in a peculiar 

 Irish way of its own,' contrary to the practice of all other parasites, 

 stimulating and developing "the resources of its host, and causing 

 it to grow and. luxuriate instead of fading and perishing. It may 



