(0^^ AND ^^^^ 



JOURNAL OF VARIATION. 



No. 10. Vol. IV. October 15th, 1893. 



file President's Address to the British yissociation corisidered 

 in its relation to Entomology. 



By J. W. TUTT, F.E.S. 



It will not, perhaps, be out of place to bring before our readers a 

 few of the remarks made by Dr. Burdon-Sanderson in his inaugural 

 address to the British Association, at Nottingham, on September 13th. 

 Not that they deal particularly with Entomology per se, but since they 

 deal with biology in its broadest sense, entomology, of necessity, is 

 included in the generalisations. The learned Doctor defines biology as 

 " the sum of the knowledge which has as yet been acquired concerning 

 living nature," and he further states that the term was first employed 

 by Treviranus early in the present century. With regard to this 

 definition he saj^s : — " It suggests the idea of organism as that to Avhich 

 all other biological ideas must relate. It also suggests, although perhaps 

 it does not express it, that action is not an attribute of the organism but 

 of its essence — that if, on the one hand, protoplasm is the basis of life, 

 on the other, life is the basis of protoplasm, their relation to each other 

 being reciprocal." He then goes on to say " Whether with the old 

 writers we speak about consensus, with Treviranus about adaptation, or 

 are content to take organism as our point of departure, it means that, 

 regarding a plant or an animal as an organism, we concern ourselves 

 primarily with its activities or, to use the word Avhich best expresses it, 

 its energies. Now the first thing that strikes us in beginning to think 

 about the activities of an organism is that they are naturally distin- 

 guishable into two kinds, according as we consider the action of the 

 whole organism in its relation to the external world or to other 

 organisms, or the action of other parts or organs in their relation to each 

 other. The distinction to which we are thus led between the internal and 

 external relations of plants and animals has, of course, always existed, 

 but has only lately come into such prominence that it divides biologists, 

 more or less completely, into two camps — on the one hand those who 

 make it their aim to investigate the actions of the organism and its 

 parts by the accepted methods of physics and chemistry, carrying this 

 investigation as far as the conditions under which each process manifests 

 itself will permit ; on the other those who interest themselves rather in 

 considering the place which each organism occupies, and the part which 

 it plays in the economy of nature. It is apparent that the two lines 



