PB,OCEEDI^'GS OF THE 



interesting paper on a method o£ investigating tlie gravitational 

 sensitiveness of the root-tip ; and Prof. Bose another, accompanied 

 by a striking demonstration, on the electrical response of ordinary 

 plants when stimulated mechanically. 



Such is the fare with which our intellectual banquets have been 

 spread. It is not too much to say, that to partake regularly of it 

 is in itself a liberal scientific education : I, at least, am finding it 

 so. But whilst learning and admiring, I have sometimes wondered, 

 in the rare moments when my attention has strayed from the 

 question under discussion, what can be the underlying motive of 

 all this activity in subjects that are but seldom of obvious practical 

 utility. What is it that inspires the toils of the collector abroad, 

 and the labours of the investigator at home ? With what object 

 in view is it that we are banded together into a ]N"atural History 

 Society ? 



No doubt the imperious desire, the intellectual necessity, to 

 know, which is the distinguishing feature of the human mind, is 

 the mainspring that keeps all this complicated machinery in motion. 

 And what more natural than that satisfaction should have been 

 sought in the living organisms which inhabit, or have inhabited, 

 the globe. But what is it that we seek to know conceiming them? 

 The first thing is to ascertain what forms exist or have existed ; a 

 process of simple apprehension, recognizing their individuality and 

 calling them by name. This is necessarily followed by the desire 

 for orderly arrangement or classification of the objects observed ; a 

 further step which is rapidly taken nowadays, but one that has 

 become so easy only within comparatively recent times. The 

 history of the development of classification is of profound interest. 

 The earlier attempts in this direction were either quite arbitrary, 

 as when alphabetical ai'rangements were adopted ; or were based 

 on extraneous features, as, for instance, M-hen Dioscorides divided 

 plants into the aromatic, the alimentary, the medicinal, and the 

 vinous, according to their propei'ties. At length it began to be 

 perceived that certain resemblances and differences could be traced 

 among living things, from which principles for their classification 

 might be drawn. It is always difficult to fix the exact date, or to 

 determine the individual author, of any great advance in science, 

 for this is the result of the labours of mauy men and of more than 

 one age. However, it is approximately true to state that the 

 foundations of our Taxonomy were laid in the sixteenth century. 

 Botany became a science with the publication of Andrea Cesalpino's 

 great work 'De Plantis' at Florence in 1583 : and Zoology, which 

 had made no progress since the time of Aristotle, was reconstituted 

 by the labours of Edward Wottou, whose work ' De Differentiis 

 Animalium" was published in 1552, and by those of Conrad 

 Gesner, who was equally active in both sciences, and left behind 

 him unpublished works of great importance to both on his un- 

 timely death in 1565. For centuries, however, the two modes of 

 classification continued to co-exist. But the unscientific, if useful, 

 artificial systems that succeeded each other gradually gave place to 



