180 AJ^NIVEESAEY ADDRESS. 



land emulated "White and "Waterton in never stating anything 

 as a fact of which he had not satisfied himself by actual 

 experiment. I once found him cooking a piece of a dead 

 kelt. "Good gracious!" I said, " how can you eat anything so 

 abominably nasty?" "No doubt," he said, "it is nasty enough, 

 but how can I say so unless I have tried it ? " 1 remember his 

 earnest, wistful face as he contemplated a huge oyster — of what 

 kind I know not — but it was almost as big as a cheese plate. He 

 looked at it once or twice with an evident wish to experiment on 

 its flavour, but, although blessed with a very strong stomach, his 

 resolution failed him, and he resolved to make the experiment 

 vicariously. He called in a dustman, and on the principle of ^' Fiat 

 experimentum in corpore vili,^^ ofi'ered him a shilling to eat it. The 

 spirit of the dustman was willing, but his stomach weak, and he 

 recoiled from the undertaking. Buckland increased the bribe by 

 an added pot of porter. On this the dustman devoured half the 

 tempting bivalve, but suddenly retired without completing the 

 experiment ; and the precise flavour of that oyster is still locked, 

 unrecorded, in the dustman's breast. Buckland was slow of con- 

 viction. It took me seven years to persuade him that although 

 the parr, the young of the salmon, was a barred fish, it did not 

 follow that all the barred fish of the salmon tribe were necessarily 

 the young of the salmon. In the end, after producing some scores 

 of barred trouts, known in Ireland as " gubbs," in different stages 

 of spawning, I persuaded him of the fact, and ^' Salmo salmulus" of 

 Yarrell thenceforth held a place in his catalogue of fishes. Well, 

 he has passed away, and has left his works behind to speak for 

 him. I earnestly recommend their perusal to all, especially the 

 young, who may desire to mingle knowledge with amusement. 

 His works, as his memory, will long endure, a monument of patient, 

 kindly, and scientific observation. 



I must now conclude, thanking you most heartily for the kind 

 attention you have bestowed. If I have, by my crude and 

 necessarily brief notices of some few of the writers on the subject 

 we all value so highly, aroused or increased the desire to study 

 their works, my object will have been attained. I can only wish 

 that the task had fallen into less incompetent hands, and that a 

 subject so replete with interest had been handled by one more 

 capable than myself of doing it justice. 



