282 the president's address. 



sympathy amongst all who call themselves " students and lovers of 

 nature." It is but a small intellectual life that is bounded by a 

 diatom or a bug, and the mental activity which expends itself in 

 counting striae, or the joints of antennae, will scarcely aspire to more. 

 Verily, they have their reward. But many there be who go beyond 

 this, and would interrogate at every step, wherefore this ? and where- 

 fore that ? and to these I would say, step out of your own field, and 

 walk in your neighbour's garden, and scent the odour of his flowers, 

 and you will learn how much such exercise will help you to enjoy 

 your own. There are some who do not care to read a book, hear a 

 lecture, or converse with a stranger on any but their own hobby. 

 Their sympathies are too narrow, and the best method of expanding 

 them is to join fellowship with a society which embraces all biolo- 

 gical subjects, then to interest himself in everyone's subject, except 

 his own, and a few months will prove, not only how much he has 

 gained in general biological knowledge, but, more than this, how 

 much more readily and satisfactorily he can perform his own work 

 by the light which he has borrowed from others. 



Lastly, and this is of wider application than to ourselves, such a 

 view as I have urged might well furnish a test for crude theories, of 

 which many have been born and died during the past thirty or forty 

 years. When such a theory is presented to us, it is well to inquire 

 how it accords with our own experience and that of others, not only 

 in vegetable but animal life. To ask is there any biological analogy 

 for such a theory ? are there any biological facts to support it ? If 

 not, then it must be the more carefully examined, for it comes 

 ushered in by a doubt. For example, if we are asked to believe 

 that lichens are only a combination of Fungi and Alga3, we may be 

 led to inquire whether Batrachians, which on one hand may resemble 

 fish, and on the other mammals, are, in fact, only a combination of 

 fish and mammal. If such be really the case, some analogy may 

 be predicated between Lichens and Batrachians. 



The remarks which I now draw to a close are far from exhaus- 

 tive. The subject could not be exhausted so readily. I have not 

 entered into minute details and examples for which no time was at 

 my disposal. I do not pretend to have done more than introduce 

 you to a subject of interest worthy of contemplation, and have 

 scattered a few suggestions by the way. I leave to each the task 

 of filling up, and covering, my skeleton with muscle and skin accord- 

 ing to his predilection. If there is a good foundation for the 



