476 president's address. 



the reach of all the methods which he can bring to bear upon it. 

 Those who believe, as I do, that there is a Creator of all things, 

 visible and invisible, cannot be affected by opinions necessarily 

 formed independently of real knowledge. If however, there is 

 any opinion forced upon my mind by whatever study I have been 

 able to give to nature, it is that there is almost infinite variety in 

 everything created. The hundred thousand or more known species 

 of plants, the bewildering multitude of forms of animal life, the 

 countless stars, the epochs of past creations imbedded in the 

 rocks, the metals and their combinations, the gems and their 

 forms of crystal and colour, the amazing, the endless aspects of 

 all matter, unite in one testimony the infinite variety of nature. 

 There is a plan in all, a unity in all. The recognition of that 

 plan is the daily labour of naturalists ; but while they perceive 

 this, they recognise also the endless variation of the means. No 

 two species are made alike, no two produce their seed by exactly 

 similar contrivances. There are plants which produce no seed, 

 and plants whose methods of reproduction have eluded all inquiry. 

 There are sexual distinctions in animals, and a large section where 

 these distinctions are dispensed with. There are animals which 

 reproduce their young according to what we call, from our limited 

 experience, the normal condition of the fertilization of the ova, 

 and then whole generations succeed in which all this is set aside. 

 I might go on to much greater length in giving illustration of 

 what is so familiar to us all, but no one will doubt that the 

 principle which we have discovered universally prevalent in 

 nature is unity and variety. 



I can well believe that there is much truth in evolution. If 

 to-morrow the evidence of its occurrence were established on 

 indubitable grounds, it would be one more beautiful illustration 

 of the plan of nature. But to say that it takes place, or has 

 taken place in every case because we find it true in many, is an 

 assertion which we need not trouble ourselves to discuss. And 

 this I think will be the upshot of what we see so hotly contested 



