IINNEAIf SOCIETY OF LONDOJf. 33 



due to antecedent conditions. What we need is the creation of 

 an atmosphere wherein this mutual understanding shall resist 

 such corrosive influences as may operate when the present strain 

 is relaxed. 



Want of cordiality between philosophical and applied study is 

 only a symptom of distemper. Though a general symptom, the 

 present attitude of philosophical study suggests that it is not a 

 serious one. Less general, but more acute where it is manifested, 

 is the want of cordiality between academic and philosophical 

 study. Usually we may apply to the academic woi-ker the de- 

 scription of Chaucer, " gladly would he learn and gladly teach," 

 and find him sympathetic towards every branch of science and 

 every human activity. Sometimes, however, the pleasure of 

 teaching outweighs the joy of learning ; subjective differences 

 may then be imputed to identical interests, real differences be 

 overlooked. Our own pursuits attest the variability of this 

 symptom. Academic zoology, a fusion of histology and com- 

 parative anatomy, is always cordial towards natural history. 

 Academic botany, which combines with these two sciences a 

 technology borrowed from the institutes of husbandry, is at 

 times the reverse. When this academic study was still a novel 

 doctrine, an opsimathic trait which might have amused the 

 Greek and irritated the Eoman was intelligible. It is gradually 

 disappearing, and the traces that still persist may perhaps be due 

 less to the character of the teacher than to the influence of the 

 experimental study which this academic doctrine includes. 



A more serious symptom is the modern tendency of the experi- 

 mental student to belittle the activities of those who must rely 

 mainly on observation in the task of advancing natural knowledge. 

 Students of natural history observe in the field and there obtain 

 zoological, botanical, and geological material. They observe afresh 

 in the museum and describe their specimens in order that their 

 results may be systematized for deduction. If the astronomer 

 and the meteorologist do not collect specimens, their observatory 

 records have to be catalogued and registered before they can be 

 systematized. 



The worker in the laboratory, carried away by the zeal which 

 his method inspires, at times confuses the means he employs with 

 the end he has in view. He appears to conceive that it is the 

 experiment he conducts which leads to his discoveries. This is 

 not so, even in the case of a successful " fool experiment." The 

 experimental worker is apt to overlook the fact that without 

 observation he could not record, without co-ordination he could 

 not utilize his results. He fails to note the unconscious exercise 

 by himself of those very faculties that the "mere observer" brings 

 to bear on his work. It is true that in natural history we some- 

 times meet with the same excess of zeal, the same inhibition of 

 the sense of relativity. Those whose task is the co-ordination 

 of knowledge occasionally appear to regard classification as an 

 end in itself. They waste energy in controversy as to the merits 



LINN. SOC. PBOCEEDINGS. — SESSION 1916-1917. d 



