INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 237 



known. And what do we read in the record of their lives ? They were 

 almost, without exception, kind and simple hearted, and possessed 

 of all those qualities that endear men to each other. The old 

 butterfly hunter, no longer able to wield his net, sits by the hour 

 on the woodside stile, and feasts his eyes with the mazy dance of 

 the white admiral and others of his favourites. 



The plant collector, with each returning spring, felt young again, 

 and sallied forth with quickened pulse to see which of his old 

 favourites was the first to greet him, ready to sing with Hurdis — 



" 0, Proserpine, for the flowers now 

 Which, frighted, thou let'st from fall Dis's waggon — 

 Anemones that come before the swallow dares, 

 And take the winds of March with beauty ; pale Primroses 

 And Violets dim, but sweeter far, than the lids of Juno's eyes, 

 Or Cytherea's breath, bold Oxlips, and the Crown Imperial, 

 With Daffodils, and Lilies of all kinds 

 To make ye garlands of." 



And the anemones, and the violets, and hundreds more still keep 

 blooming on, each in its appointed season, and the butterflies flutter 

 over them as they did a century ago ; and shall we pass all by 

 like— 



— " The sluggish clod, which the rude swain 

 Turns with his share and treads upon ?" 



I trust not, especially when we have those aids to investigation 

 unknown to the earlier naturalists. And this leads me at once to 

 what I should wish to see studied — the natural productions of the 

 district, the vegetation of the soil, and the living things, particu- 

 larly the insects, which are found there also, and I trust an her- 

 barium and cabinet, in which these may be preserved, will at no 

 distant date form an important feature in the objects of the Club. 



Biology, or the study of living things, naturally divides itself 

 into two sections — zoology and phytology, or the animal and 

 vegetable kingdoms — and although in the simplest forms of each 

 these approximate so closely that we know no single absolute char- 

 acter by which they can be separated, yet practically we find no 

 difficulty in assigning even the lowest organisms to their proper 

 position. 



Motility was at one time believed to be indisputable evidence of 

 animal life, yet Volvox and Pandorina, with the great group of 

 Diatomacea?, are now unhesitatingly referred to the vegetable 

 Journ. Q. M. C. No. 16. r 



