X PROCEEDINGS OF THE 



its aspect through the volumes that have been published since my 

 last year's address. I now refer to the first formation and early 

 development in the living plant or animal of those parts which 

 are to become distinct organs, buds, or new individuals — the his- 

 tory of the gradual outgrowth of an organ or bud, or of a germ 

 before and after fecundation, of the separation of the bud or germ 

 from the parent, and of the early independent existence of the 

 new individual. Organogenesis and Embryogeny, Nutrition and 

 Eeproduction have undoubtedly of late years been investigated with 

 more detail on the Continent than with us ; and although our great 

 naturaKsts may not have been behindhand in studying results, we 

 have been indebted for a large number of facts to continental ob- 

 servations. 



In considering these observations it may not be uninteresting to 

 keep in mind a perceptible difference between our two great scientific 

 neighbours, the French and the Germans. Excelling in method, the 

 French are unrivalled in clearness of exposition in Natural History, 

 as in Mathematics, Jurisprudence, Philosophy, and other abstruse 

 subjects. With a great readiness to seize the general bearings of 

 the several facts or points they have before them, they will at once 

 organize them into systems or theories, often successfully ; but they 

 may be sometimes apt too readily to admit into these systems and 

 theories elements which they have not verified, or not to wait for a 

 sufficient confirmation by repeated observations of the original facts 

 upon which they were founded. On the other hand, method and 

 exposition are not among the distinguishing characters of German 

 naturalists ; they have had no Jussieu, no De Candolle, no Cuvier, 

 nor, in earlier days, had they a Tournefort or a Buffon ; but they 

 are beyond all competition in laborious and patient investigation of 

 details upon which aU reliable conclusions must be founded ; to them 

 also we practically owe the greater number of important compila- 

 tions. Genera and Species, Nomenclatures and indexes, Records, 

 &c., equally requiring steady labour, with results not brilliant, but 

 useful. Again, if the French are good theorists, the Germans are 

 great speculators. If French theories may sometimes be found 

 defective in detail, so German imagination is apt to wander too 

 far from the facts from which it started. And this comparison of 

 French method and German detail, of French theory and German 

 speculation, will probably be found exemplified not only in their 

 physiological researches and elementary works, but also in their 

 monographs and other systematic publications. You, learn more 



