98 Anniversary Address. 



sera when our posterity will look back upon us with as great 

 wonder as we do upon our barbarous predecessors?'^ 



At the close of several of the Addresses of my predecessors in 

 office, I have observed something like an apology for the small 

 performances of the Club during the antecedent year. I confess 

 I do not feel disposed to view the labours of my Fellow-Mem- 

 bers hitherto with any other than grateful emotions. The least 

 important of these labours — the noting of the names and habitats 

 of plants and insects — may seem easy ; but to do it to purpose 

 requires observation and attainments which few possess ; and it 

 should be remembered, that to "name the animals'' was one of 

 the first tasks assigned to man by his Maker, as an element of 

 his intended dominion over them*. While humbly following 

 this high precedent, our Members, as we see, have not neglected 

 other collateral branches of science. And in carefully laying 

 up a store of facts and observations from our own district, we 

 are performing a function of which a coming age may reap some 

 advantage. We may be supplying helps to we know not what 

 future triumphs of intellect ! We may be adding one stone to 

 the bridge which is hereafter to span a gulf now separating 

 different sciences ; or paving a small portion of the road that 

 leads to the metropolis of universal knowledge ; or laying a step 

 on which higher and higher generalization shall culminate at last 

 to a point from whence may be scaled the highest heaven of 

 science ! " The vultures which bask one above another in the 

 heights of the air, obseiTC and follow the flight of those below ; 

 and thus appear, as if by enchantment, at once upon the field of 

 action." — Douglas, Advancement of Society, p. 131. 



* The discovery of them can be recorded only by " naming " them, and 

 the progress this has lately made is extraordinary. Linnaeus, in 1735, could 

 only name 47 genera and 117 species of birds ; all that he, " the lynx-eyed," 

 had then discovered. Now, the Grays and the Goulds name 800 genera and 

 7000 species. 



