TUE TEANSACTTOXS OV THE LTXXEAX SOCIETY. 201 



refresh his owu mind while he contemplates the labours of others 

 and enjoy a series of new and vivid impressions. As in a carriage- 

 drive through an agreeably diversified country, we feel the rapid 

 movement which we do not cause, and gaze, reposing, on the 

 changing prospect. Such relaxation exerts a healthful influence ; 

 nor can it be rightly enjoyed by those who do not themselves labour 

 for science, so that, indirectly, it serves to stimulate research. 

 Some there are who would denounce all pleasures of this kind as 

 tending to excite desultory habits, forgetting that it is one thing, 

 after work-hours, to vary our moments of leisure, — another to waste 

 our whole time in multiple pursuits. They forget, also, that for want 

 of a wider acquaintance with previous investigations, many discoverers 

 have brought little aid to science, because the true import of what they 

 have seen has but dimly revealed itself to their ill-trained powers 

 of apprehension. These miss much which the more accomplished 

 student of nature is ever ready to secure. Opportunity offers new 

 objects of study, of which they are slow to avail themselves, and their 

 restricted habit of mind, if it does not engender positive errors, tends 

 at least to beget the evils that accompany an inadequate method. 

 For what is the real use of special investigations ? Others, of course, 

 wiU value them in so far as they increase the general stock of know- 

 ledge, but to the investigator himself they are mainly serviceable 

 as a means of mental culture — as affording him, so to speak, a key 

 wherewithal to unlock the treasures which his fellow- workers have 

 collected. Thus is he enabled to make their experience his own. 

 Many expend their hours in going over the old ground of their pre- 

 decessors, forgetting how impossible it is that each should study 

 everything for himself. If this were so, why print books or papers, 

 except to promote self-glorification ? The man whose illogical mind 

 will not teach him when he can trust what has been done by others 

 should be expelled the threshold of science, neck and heels. How 

 little in the way of direct observation is even the best of us able to 

 effect ! " The greatest genius," wrote Goethe, " will never be worth 

 " much if he pretends to draAv exclusively from his own resources. 

 " What is genius, but the faculty of seizing and turning to account 

 " everything that strikes us ?" — let us call it the faculty of appropria- 

 tion. Edward Eorbes, in a well-known passage, advocating the study 

 of our native fauna, has made eloquent reference to " the glorious 

 variety of Nature," which those only will contemn as an empty- 

 sounding phrase, who have neglected to cultivate the varied faculties 

 N.H.R.— 1865. P 



