j4 Boston Society of Natural History 



ADDRESS OF PRESIDENT ELIOT 



This Society has two distinct objects: (1 ) the promotion of Nat- 

 ural History by stimulating and aiding advanced study and original 

 research, and (2) the enlightenment of the common people con- 

 cerning animate and inanimate nature. What I have to say touches 

 each of these two objects. 



It would carry us into a discussion too solemn for this occasion 

 to attempt to state the primary reasons which should induce men 

 to study Nature devotedly, although no tangible benefits could ever 

 flow from that study ; for I have never been able to find any better 

 answer to the question — what is the chief end of studying Na- 

 ture? — than the answer which the Westminster Catechism gives 

 to the question, what is the chief end of man ? — namely, " To glorify 

 God, and to enjoy him forever." 



I shall ask your attention to a proposition which contains only 

 a secondary, though sufficient, reason for fostering the study of Nat- 

 ural History — to the proposition that the human race has more and 

 greater benefits to expect from the successful cultivation of the sci- 

 ences which deal with living things than from all the other sciences 

 put together. I by no means forget what mechanics and physics 

 have brought to pass within a hundred years. They have already 

 reduced the earth to one-tenth of its former size, as regards the car- 

 riage of persons and goods, and for the transmission of thought, will, 

 and fact, they bid fair to make the whole surface of the globe as one 

 room. They have made it easy, on the one hand, to concentrate 

 population in dense masses, and on the other to reach new soils 

 and shores, and to distribute to all countries the peculiar produc- 

 tions of each. These wonderful achievements of mechanics and 

 physics, aided by chemistry, produce indirect effects upon the well- 

 being of man, some good effects and some bad, with a probable pre- 



