46 FROM DUST TO DUST. 



great tree of knowledge, planted as a seed by primeval man, 

 tended and trained through long ages by the loving hands of those 

 devoted to its culture, and watered, aye, sometimes by the blood 

 of martyrs — for science has had its martyrs — until it has grown 

 into that sturdy giant which it is now our privilege and duty to 

 tend ! May we guard this sacred inheritance with jealous care, 

 and add new growth to that good old stem which enshrines the 

 labour of many great men, who though long gone from us, are 

 ever present in our life's work ! 



Aristotle, the father and creator of Scientific Biology, with the 

 clear insight of his philosophic mind, discerned in organic nature 

 an ascending complexity from the vegetable kingdom up to man. 

 Strange indeed that this bud of thought should have remained 

 dormant for about 2000 years, until Lamarck, Goethe, Erasmus 

 Darwin, and, above all, Charles Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace 

 gave it vigour to unfold and bloom as the fairest flower of modern 

 philosophy. Great and far-reaching as this Theory of Evolution 

 has been, it yet failed to explain many of its own phenomena. 

 It traced, step by step, the gradual development of the higher 

 from the lower organisms — or from ancestors which were common 

 to both — but, it hardly took sufficient account of the work effected 

 and still being done by micro-organisms, without which all life 

 would be impossible, and which have certainly been amongst the 

 principal agents and factors of Evolution. 



For a knowledge of these micro-organisms, and of their power 

 for good and evil, this and all future ages will owe a deep debt of 

 gratitude to Davaine, Pasteur, Lister, Koch, Metschnikoff and 

 others, who have explored for us this hitherto unknown world of 

 life ', a world within a world, and, may be, the very centre where 

 life began, and whence it radiates, connecting all life together as 

 in an endless chain. It seems that we have got at least one step 

 further towards the solution of the mystery of Life. 



The thoughts of many minds seem for a time to float about, 

 as nebulous theories, in the atmosphere of the scientific world, 

 until some one with master mind condenses and crystallises them 

 into a shape and form, to which the breath of his genius gives 

 energy and life. When any new and great discovery is made, it 

 at first seems to explain so much and to open up so many new 



