Proceedings of Phiios^hieal Sotielies. [Mabcr, 



plicab'e. ** In Sweden and Germany," says he, ** mineralogy is 

 considered as a science worthy the attention of government. 

 There are Colleges in which it is regularly taught ; it forms a 

 distinct and honourable profession, like that of the soldier, the 

 mei chant, or the barrister; its superior officers form a part of 

 the administration of the state. Young students fraught with 

 the knowledge to be acquired in their own country are sent 

 abroad to glean all that can be collected from a more diversified 

 yiew of nature. Tliis example has been followed by France, 

 Jlussia, and Spain. Chemistry too, the parent of mineralogy, ia 

 cultivated by the most enlightened nations in Europe, and parti- 

 cularly in France, with a degree of ardour that approaches to 

 ^enthusiasm, in England, on the co'^trary, it receives no encou*. 

 ragement from the pubhc." These observations which that 

 ennnent naturalist then applied to the studies in which he was 

 more particularly engaged, may, to a certain extent, be yet 

 xJirected towards every other branch of natural philosophy. In 

 Jthe posthumous works of Dr. Hooke, which were dedicated to 

 Sir Isaac l^^ewton, when he was President of the Royal Society, 

 by its Secretary Waller,* we find their author nmintaining, that 

 the neglect shown to natural philosophy has been characteristi- 

 cal, not of this country alone, but of all nations and in all ages. 

 '* Learned men," he complains, *' take only a transient view of 

 natural philosophy in their passage to other things; thinking ii 

 sufficient to be able to talk of it in the phrase of the school, 

 ^'or is it only so now, but it has been so almost in all ages ; so 

 ihat for about 2000 years, of which w^e have some account in 

 history, there is not above one quarter of that space in which 

 men have been philosophically given ; and among such, as have 

 been so, several of them have been so far disjoined by time, lan.- 

 guage, and climate, by n^anner of education, manners and 

 jopinions, and divers other prejudices, that it could not he 

 expected it should make any considerable progress." 



Vet the effect of such studies upon the mind, and especially in 

 jplaces appropriated to public education, and in an age when 

 ialse philosophy and irreligion have been so alarmingly mani- 

 fested, may perhaps secure for them a more favourable reception; 

 aince it requires no argument to prove that the evidences of reli- 

 gion always keep pace, and are progressive, with the discoveries 

 jn natural knowledge. After a long life entirely devoted to the 

 .studies of natural history, Linnajus placed over the lintel of the 

 idoor of his museum an inscription which was calculated to con- 

 vey to the mind of every approaching student a conviction of this 

 truth ; Innocut vivito ! Nuuien adest ! f 



Having thus set before the Society the main design and objects 



• Ilooke's Present Stetc ©f Natural Philosophy ; see Popthumous Works, p. H. 

 Lend. 1705. 



t bee iiinnsus'i Diary, wriUm hy iumieU; in Pulteney't Linnaeus by Maton, pag* 

 i6J.Loiul.lbU5. 



