1865.] DAWSON — THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION. 421 



ordinary working naturalist. The effect of this, along with the 

 almost inevitable tendency of specialists to underrate other branches 

 of study than their own, will, without doubt, be in some respects 

 damaging to the true progress of science ; and, for some time, 

 we must be prepared to find much good work spoiled by defective 

 and one-sided classification, and crude hypotheses about the pro- 

 duction of species by natural selection, and the supposed identity 

 of vital forces with the forces of inorganic nature. The scientific 

 pendulum swings just now in this direction ; and it is not unusual 

 to find men framing new classifications on the most petty anato- 

 mical grounds, without regard to broader affinities, reasoning about 

 the convertibility of species in precisely the same strain in which 

 alchemists, centuries ago, descanted about the transmutation of 

 the metals, and imagining that because vital force supports itself 

 at the expense of heat, or light, or electricity, that therefore it is 

 identical with them : but the pendulum will swing back, and we 

 shall find, perhaps, that the machine has, after all, kept up with 

 the time ; though it is sad to think that the path of knowledge is 

 so tortuous, that so few can reach the goal, and that the oscilla- 

 tions of the pendulum represent so much vain expenditure of 

 highly endowed mind. 



It must, however, be admitted that much of the present diffi- 

 culty in the way of sound biological science arises from the vast 

 extent of the ramifications of the subject, and the impossibility of 

 its being all grasped by one mind. In this way the very enlarge- 

 ment of our knowledge becomes a source of weakness, and the 

 great empires of the earlier zoologists become broken up with 

 petty and powerless principalities. Only those great minds which 

 appear at very rare intervals can rescue natural science from this 

 kind of disintegration ; and perhaps the time may come when 

 no possible mind can do this. The question is not yet solved 

 whether the power of generalization can keep pace with the collec- 

 tion of facts in nature. At present, of English-speaking naturalists 

 we have only Agassiz and Owen who are at all able to grapple 

 with the greater and wider questions of zoology, and both of these 

 men are borne down with an intolerable amount of labor. Dr. 

 Acland thus discoursed in his opening address on the difficulties 

 of the subject : 



" Although the wisdom of this Association entitles this meeting 

 a sub-section, I am among the minority who cannot understand 

 the force of the arguments which go to class biology (which 



Vol. II. cc No. 6. 



