Linnean Society, 373 



hitherto kept on the islands in the lake at the Regent's Park, with the 

 several varieties of sheep, and the large zebus, for which no accommodation 

 can be at present afforded in the gardens, have been transferred to the farm. 



Art. IV. Linneayi Society, 



Mr. Duncan^ s Address at the Anniversary Dinner of the Linnean Society ^ 

 on the 25th of May last. — Sir, Your request, founded on Mr. Don's too 

 favourable report of the few remarks which I ventured to utter at the 

 Linnean Society's dinner, is inviting, and I hope something better than flat- 

 tering. It is inviting to a recapitulation of sentiments rather than of words. 

 I am no orator, and am therefore convinced that my matter must have 

 wanted the grace of rhetoric. If the little which I ventured to say pro- 

 duced sympathy, it was a good feeling ready formed in the kind hearts of 

 those around me, which wanted but small excitement to cause it to break 

 forth. Many, I am willing to believe, most, of those who were present, were 

 much better acquainted with the details of natural history than myself. I 

 perhaps said that I was the last called, and least worthy to be called, a natu- 

 ralist. I faintly remember to have observed that, although Nature was ever 

 dear to me, as the source of my best and purest delights, from infancy to 

 manhood, I came, as one who reaches a beautiful shore after shipwreck, to 

 the land of natural science. I left the courts of law in a state of extreme ill 

 health, and sought refuge and relief, for body and mind, in Nature's garden. 



« Not that fair field 



Of Enna, where Proserpine gathering flowers. 

 Herself a fairer flower, by gloomy Dis 

 Was gathered ; . . . . nor that sweet grove 

 Of Daphne by Orontes, and the inspired 

 Castalian spring, might with this paradise 

 Compare." 



I sought it, not as a child, to pick up rare and gaudy flowers, to hunt butter- 

 flies, or to ensnare newts or fish, or birds or mice, but as a man, not unused 

 to trace important conclusions through a chain of complicated evidence. I 

 could not regard the wide prospect of beauty and magnificence before me, 

 even for a moment, and witness the manifest adaptation of means to ends, 

 the multitude of diversities which distinguish objects into larger and smaller 

 groups, into kingdoms, classes, &c , the analogies which demonstrate a unity 

 of intention pervading every part, without perceiving the traces of that 

 Great Power, in attestation of whose glory 



" All nature cries aloud through all his works." 



" They want not speech nor language, but their voices are heard among 

 them. Their sound is gone out into all lands, even unto the ends of the 



world." T J • ,. • 



Yet, again and again have I been asked. Cm bono ? I admit the import- 

 ance of this business-like question ; and, if I did not feel ready to admit its 

 fairness, and to reply to it to the utmost conviction of my heart, I should 

 feel myself unworthy to be the guardian of the Ashmolean Museum, or to 

 be a member of the Linnean Society. If the question, Cui bono ? be limited 

 to the consideration of pecuniary profit or lucre, I have, indeed, only to say, 

 correct or systematised knowledge is the only true and solid foundation of 

 all art ; is the source of permanent power, and, therefore, of individual and 

 national wealth. The individual who devised the means of supplying half 

 London with wholesome water did not, indeed, reap the benefit by which 



