DUBLIN UNIVERSITY ZOOLOGICAL AND BOTANICAL ASSOCIATION. 3 



local interest), which we omit, as they have already appeared, mostly at 

 fall length, in the preceding volumes of this Journal.] 



The worthy President of the Linnaean Society, my friend Professor 

 Bell, in an introductory lecture recently given at Guy's Hospital, has so 

 fully illustrated the necessity which exists for some intellectual resource 

 beyond the ordinary occupation of a man's life, that I venture to borrow 

 the passage from him, rather than to attempt to clothe his ideas in my 

 own words. I may remark that he furnishes in himself an admirable 

 example of what he urges, and when he retires from his laborious prac- 

 tice, finds in his retreat at Selborne (the Selborne of Gilbert White) 

 refreshment in the difficult zoological subjects which he so ably 

 pursues : — 



" Every one who has experienced the tcedium vitce, the harass and fatigue of spirit 

 arising from the close application of the mental powers, for any lengthened time, to one 

 absorbing and anxious object, must have felt the craving of the mind for some new occu- 

 pation, which, by a healthful change in the direction of the intellectual force, might 

 relieve the fatigue and weariness of the over- wrought and over-excited sensorium. This 

 relief is not always to be obtained by abstract rest. 



" The mere cessation of exertion does not satisfy or fill the void created by long and 

 tiring labour on one exclusive subject. As when the eye has long been gazing upon any 

 object of a bright and intense colour, the greatest relief that can be afforded to it is its 

 resting, not in darkness, but in some material of a hue complementary to that by which 

 it has been fatigued. 



" Again, when from illness, distress, or any other disqualification, the laborious man 

 of business, or the diligent student, is incapacitated for his accustomed pursuits, how 

 depressing are the languor and inanity which attend him on his retirement, unless he 

 has some intellectual resource upon which to exercise his otherwise inert and useless 

 powers. Accustomed to active exertion, and possibly to experimental or abstruse inves- 

 tigation in his ordinary avocation, if he be deprived of these, and no substitute presents 

 itself to take their place, the mind becomes wearied and depressed, from the very absence 

 of healthful exercise and employment. And if, still further, through professional success, 

 or from any other source, the approach of age finds him retiring from his wonted stirring 

 occupation, and hoping, after a life spent in the exercise of active duties, to enjoy the 

 blessings of a competency in that rest from his labours which, to a mind well regulated 

 and stored with intellectual resources, constitutes the height of earthly enjoyment, and 

 a precious auxiliary means of preparation for the great change to which he is hastening, — 

 if there be no such store of intellectual treasure, no pursuit in literature, or science, or 

 philosophy, to occupy the leisure days and years that remain to him, how listless, at the 

 best, and, too often, how full of misery, is the interval allotted to him between the ces- 

 sation of his active employment and the end of his earthly career ! These considerations 

 have, at times, forced themselves upon me so powerfully, that I have, without hesitation, 

 embraced the present opportunity of showing how important it is to provide, by some 

 extra-professional pursuit — whether literary or scientific — a rational and intellectual 

 amusement, and relaxation to the intervals of business, — solace in time of illness or dis- 

 tress, and an unfailing resource in retirement, after the ordinary duties and avocations of 

 life are over." 



Mr. Bell goes on to quote several instances of men who, having 

 amassed wealth in business, have retired to what they supposed rest, 

 and found it not ; he tells us of some who even committed suicide, and 

 of others who returned to perform gratuitously the duties of the voca*- 

 tion in which they had been brought up. 



I may add, that it is from hard-working men that good extra scien- 

 tific work is generally to be obtained ; the man of leisure lacks energy 



