4 INAUGURAL ADDRESS OF THE I'RESIDENT. 



tells people that the poison of a contagious fever maybe a bacterium 

 or something allied to a bacterium, or something not allied to a 

 bacterium." Well, gentlemen, the warriors have had a good many 

 rounds, and I fear the fight has not yet terminated. As to results, 

 nothing has as yet, perhaps, been definitely settled ; yet, as a 

 patient on-looker (and one not much concerned with tlie personal 

 disfigurements sustained by individual combatants), I am free to 

 confess myself an entire convert to the hypothesis which holds that 

 organic germs of some kind or other are really capable of producing 

 the most disastrous consequences both to man and beast. However, 

 I must again remark that when an investigator has to deal with the 

 genesis and behaviour of particles, often less than the 100,000tli of 

 an inch in diameter, it is not difficult to understand the necessity of 

 extreme caution in drawing conclusions. In connection with this 

 controversy, I am, of course, especially bearing in mind the labours 

 of Messrs. Dallinger and Drysdale, also the work accomplished by 

 Lister, Sanderson, Eoberts, Bastian, Beale, Tyndall, Lewis, and your 

 late President, As regards foreign writers and the practical applica- 

 tion of their researches, permit me to refer to the able resume of Mr. 

 Steel, in the pages of the " Veterinary Journal." 



The most humble member of this Club need not be discouraged 

 by the confessed embarrassments which some of our leaders in 

 science have experienced when dealing with the phenomena exhibited 

 by the lowest forms of life. The discipline of science is a grand 

 one. It demands candour. There is probably no living man of 

 eminence who has not retracted, more or less completely, views or 

 errors of interpretation made in the earlier years of his toil. Now 

 and then it happens that this severe discij^line makes the advanced 

 biologist too cautious. He is timid of drawing conclusions, even 

 from the most clearly recognisable facts ; not only so, he will some- 

 times refrain from expressing any opinion about matters concerning 

 which the unreflecting amateur pronounces with unblushing bold- 

 ness. Why is this ? The lessons of the past afford an ample 

 reply. When one reflects that a Scandinavian microscopist pub- 

 lished an expensively illustrated plate, showing, as he supposed, the 

 ova of a cestoid parasite, though all the while they were only the 

 spores of a cryptogam (the explanation of the error being that the 

 entozoon had been removed from a box previously containing lyco- 

 podium i)Owder) ; that a celebrated Botanist for years maintained, 

 against all comers, that the extremity of the pollen tube became 



