44« / ARTHUR THOMSON [june 



And just as no one dreams that the study of man begins or ends in 

 the dissecting-room, so we must supplement our comparative anatomy, 

 physiology, and embryology of animals by getting back to the natural 

 history picture. If we do this carefully we shall probably discover 

 that our study of organisms is even wider and grander than we had 

 supposed. We see the living creatures as parts of a great system of 

 tilings, amid which they live as unities, especially marked off from 

 things which do not live by their characteristic power of effective 

 response, and bound to other components of the system by complex 

 inter-relations, to appreciate which fully is indeed beyond the reach of 

 any one man, since it means a grasp of natural history in the oldest, 

 widest sense of the term — the science of the order of nature. Thus, 

 the two notes suggested by the old term " natural history " are really 

 one — the actual life of organisms implies such complex and far-reaching 

 inter-relations that we need all science to enable us to appreciate it. 



We speak of the correlation of organs — meaning that the various 

 members are closely bound together in one body — but we do not 

 speak enough of the correlation of organisms. Whether we take 

 Gilbert White as representing the old school, or Darwin as representing 

 the new, we get the same impression of nature as a vibrating system 

 most surely and subtly interconnected. And to have the vision of the 

 web of life is one of the ends of our study. We are familiar with 

 striking instances — the links .between cats and clover crop, between 

 earthworms and the world's bread supply, between white ants and 

 tropical agriculture, between ivory ornaments and the slave trade, 

 between bicycles and the persecution of the walrus, between stable 

 manure and the carp in the fish-pond — all " house-that- Jack-built " 

 conundrums until the procession of causes is worked out. But what 

 we have to realise is that these curiosities are simply quaint examples 

 of what the naturalist sees or has to find throughout the world. One 

 may say, with all reverence, that much of Darwin's work has been an 

 eloquent commentary on that memorable saying regarding the sparrow 

 that falls to the ground. Such a simple event literally sends a throb 

 through nature ; we can follow its effects a few steps, just as we can 

 follow for a few yards the ripples made when we throw a stone into a 

 still sea ; in neither case can we doubt that the spreading influences 

 are real though they pass beyond our ken. 



In Conclusion. 



Perhaps, in conclusion, I may suggest another advantage in con- 

 tinually returning to the facts of the case, to living creatures as they 

 live in nature. This other advantage is that it saves us from the 

 common error that the naturalist has arrived at any ultimate explana- 

 tions of things, or that as naturalist he even seeks for them. The 

 word " ultimate " does not occur in the scientific dictionary. Science 



