8 THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



study of our fauna, and so laid the foundations upon which we of the 

 present may build. Merz in his splendid treatise on the Development 

 of Thought in the Nineteenth Century has pointed out that in Germany 

 the Universities were the centres where the scientific spirit was fostered, 

 and that in France it radiated from the Academy. The older British 

 Universities are of earlier foundation than those of Germany and the 

 Royal Society of London older than tlje French Academy, and yet 

 neither from one nor the other did the stimulus fîow which led to the 

 development of the scientific spirit in Great Britain. British science 

 in the first half of last century, was essentially individualistic rather 

 tha.n institutional; it found ardent devotees in the quiet retreats 

 throughout the country in men who, like Karshish, were "pickers-up 

 of learning's crumbs" and "not incurious in God's handiwork," men, 

 who, to use Huxley's words, "were not trained in the courts of the 

 Temple of Science, but stormed the walls of that edifice in all sorts 

 of irregular ways, and with much loss of time and power, in order to 

 obtain their legitimate positions." In no country in the world has 

 science been so indebted to the intellectual strength of those who may 

 be termed amateurs as in England, and in Zoology, beginning with- 

 such illustrious names as those of Bewick and Gilbert White, there has 

 been an uninterrupted succession of keen, thoughtful, self-trained 

 naturalists, who by their observations have made real contributions 

 to science and by their writings have given us a delightful form of 

 literature of which one finds but rare examples in other languages. 

 Many are the names that come to one's mind in this -connection, 

 such as, for example, those of Thomas Edward, the Banffshire shoe- 

 maker, Edward Forbes, David Robertson, the Cum.brae naturalist, 

 William Pearson, the friend of Wordsworth, Philip Henry Gosse, 

 W^ Kitchen Parker, Hugh Miller, the Cromarty stone-mason, Alfred 

 Russell Wallace, and greatest of all, Charles Darwin, who gave to the 

 world a new philosophy and was fortunate enough to live to see it 

 universally accepted. These are only some of the names that are 

 written on Britain's Zoological roll of honour, but they are sufficient 

 for my purpose. 



Into the new lands beyond the seas the British colonists carried 

 with them the British love of Nature, and many found their relaxation 

 in zoological and other scientific studies. Their work was naturally 

 mainly faunistic, with some attention to habits and life-histories, and 

 in the larger centres associations were formed where those with common 

 interests might meet together to compare notes, the more important 

 communications later appearing in printed transactions. The Cana- 

 dian Institute, now The Royal Canadian Institute, was the first of the 

 Societies to begin regular publication, the first volume of its Journal 



