52 The Scottish Naturalist. 



human intercourse, and in the promotion of human happiness all 

 round. We can hardly realise what would be the state of society 

 if all the discoveries and applications of knowledge made during 

 the last sixty years were blotted out ; and we may well wonder 

 what our great-grandfathers would think if they could know that 

 we can travel to London in 12 hours, or to America in 6 days ; 

 that we can send a message to Hong Kong in a few minutes ; can 

 converse in human voice with a friend in Edinburgh ; and light 

 our streets, houses, public buildings, carriages, and sea-boats, with 

 what we call electricity, but which, so far as we know, is nothing 

 at all. And yet we seem to be only beginning to know or to 

 apply the knowledge of the conditions and properties of nature to 

 our own purposes. We are only beginning, e.g., to know some- 

 thing of the laws of the weather ; and it is not too much to pre- 

 dict that ere long we shall understand these laws, so that we may 

 guard against the catastrophes they produce with absolute 

 certainty. So with health and disease, we are only beginning to 

 understand that disease is the result of conditions which, in nine 

 cases out of ten, perhaps ninety-nine out of a hundred, are of our 

 own creation, or can be easily avoided ; and that the physician's 

 highest function is gradually but surely becoming that of a pre- 

 venter, rather than a curer of disease. 



Taking it for granted, then, that we are at one on these points, 

 I have now to consider how we should regulate our studies and 

 researches. The first thing, it seems to me, that each member 

 should do is to make up his or her mind what particular depart- 

 ment of knowledge he or she is to adopt for special study. Is it 

 to be chemistry, physics, geology, astronomy, meteorology, biology, 

 or what ? You may have an intelligent smattering of all these, but 

 you cannot study them all ; therefore, you must make a selection. 



Now, when you begin to study one department of science it 

 seems to you that by application and perseverance you will soon 

 gain a full knowledge of it. But the longer you study, and the 

 more you study, the more you find you have to learn. " Hills 

 peep o'er hills, and alps on alps arise ; " undreamt of fields of re- 

 search open out, and if you are faint-hearted you may think that 

 life is too short to explore them. If, however, you have acquired 

 the true spirit of science and thirst for knowledge, you will take 

 your hammer, or your spade, or your microscope, or your tele- 

 scope, as the case may be, and you will apply yourselves with 



