No. 2.] BRITISH ASSOCIATION MEETING. 149 



£2800 has been devoted to biological purposes, to which it would 

 be fair to add a part at least of the grants for Palgeontological 

 researches, many of which must be acknowledged to stand in close 

 relation to Biology. The enormous extent of knowledge and 

 research in the various departments of Biology has become a 

 serious impediment to its more complete study, and leads to the 

 danger of confined views on the part of those whose attention, from 

 necessity or taste, is too exclusively directed to the details of one 

 department, or even, as often happens, to a subdivision of it. 

 It would seem, indeed, as if our predecessors in the last genera- 

 tions, possessed this superior advantage in the then existing nar- 

 rower boundaries of knowledge, that they were able more easily 

 to overtake the contemplation of a wider field, and to follow out 

 researches in more than one of the sciences. To such combina- 

 tion of varied knowledge, united with their transcendent powers 

 of sound generalization and accurate observation, must be ascribed 

 the wide-spread and enduring influence of the works of such men 

 as Haller, Linnaeus, and Cuvier, Yon Baer and Joannes Miiller. 

 There are doubtless brilliant instances in our own time of men 

 endowed with similar powers ; but the difficulty of bringing these 

 powers into eifectual operation in a wide range is now so great, 

 that while the amount of research in special biological subjects is 

 enormous, it must be reserved for comparatively few to be the 

 authors of great systems, or of enduring broad and general views 

 which embrace the whole rano-e of biolo;2;ical science. It is in- 

 cumbent on all those, therefore, who are desirous of promoting 

 the advance of biological knowledge to combat the confined views 

 which are apt to be engendered by the too great restriction of 

 study to one department. However much subdivision of labour 

 may now be necessary in the origin, investigation, and elaboration 

 of new facts in our science (and the necessity for such subdivision 

 will necessarily increase as knowledge extends), there must be se- 

 cured at first, by a wider study of the general principles and 

 some of the details of collateral branches of knowledge, that power 

 of justly comparing and correlating facts which will mature the 

 judgment and exclude partial views. To refer only to one bright 

 example, I may say that it can scarcely be doubted that it is the 

 unequalled variety and extent of knowledge, combined with the 

 faculty of bringing the most varied facts together in new combina- 

 tion, which has enabled Dr. Darwin (whatever may be thought 

 otherwise of his system) to give the greatest impulse which has 



