3 Riley — Presidential Address. 



known to be authorities. In following this precedent, I am not 

 unmindful of the fact that the science of entomology in its 

 more abstruse and technical phases, however fascinating to the 

 specialist, attracts but little public attention, and that, from 

 among the myriad forms of life which the entomologist includes 

 within the scope of his study, there are comparatively few which 

 interest the intelligent masses or even the general biologist. 

 Among these few are the social insects, and it is my purpose to 

 treat of them to-night and see what light we may draw from 

 them on some of the great questions which now agitate natural- 

 ists. By combining the recorded observations and views of others 

 with some that are original and unpublished, I may, perhaps, 

 hope to interest all of you. 



Before entering on this main topic, however, it has seemed to 

 me advisable, in view of the character of the audience, to say 

 something of our society and what it undertakes to do. Biology 

 is a word of the century, and was first employed by Lamarck 

 (1801) as a term under which the phenomena of organic nature 

 could be considered; and by Treviranus (1802) to express the 

 science that treats of the philosophy of living nature. Syste- 

 matic zoology and botany have but incidental bearing on biology ; 

 they relate to the framework, the structure, and not to life itself. 

 Not that I undervalue taxonomy in this connection, for, indeed, 

 its value is self-evident; but modern biologists are very generally 

 divided into two camps, viz., those who investigate the different 

 parts and structures of the organism, or who study the processes 

 of growth, and those who study more particularly that phase of 

 the subject which Hsckel called ecology. In the process of 

 differentiation the term is now, perhaps, more correctly applied 

 to the study of the development of the type in the past, and of 

 the individual in the present- — not by themselves only, but in 

 their relations to all other forms of life. In other words, it in- 

 volves the interactions and interrelations of organisms, and deals 

 fundamentally with psychical even more than with structural 

 phenomena, as naturalists use these terms. 



The Biological Society was organized for the purpose of con- 

 sidering and discussing the questions involved in the very broad- 

 est application of the term biology ; in others Avords, organic 

 nature in any and all of her manifestations. Organized but 

 about two years prior to the death of Charles Darwin, it is not 



