128 OPENING OF THE MAEINE 



The objects of this Association are familiar to everyone 

 here. As originally and briefly defined, tliey are " to 

 promote accurate researches leading to the improvement of 

 Zoological and Botanical science, and to an increase of our 

 knowledge as regards tlie food, life-conditions, and habits 

 of British food-fishes and molluscs." In the present day 

 there can be little necessity for endeavouring to impress 

 upon an assembly of educated persons that any institution 

 which has for its object the increase of our knowledge of 

 natural phenomena must be a good one. Though I am far 

 from believing that such knowledge can prove by itself a 

 panacea for all human ills, the desire to obtain it is, without 

 doubt, a necessary accompaniment of the high civilisation of 

 our age. The knowledge of nature is valued by many for 

 its own sake. It is valued by many more for the practical 

 advantages to the material welfare of mankind that are 

 certain to flow from it sooner or later. It is scarcely pos- 

 sible to name one of the marvellous improvements which 

 have taken place in late years, that have added so much to 

 the convenience, the comfort, the capabilities of human 

 life, that has not been, when traced back to its source, the 

 outcome of scientific search undertaken originally for its 

 own sake. The means by which such knowledge can be 

 obtained are manifold, and a people who wish to occupy a 

 foremost place in the ranks of civilisation and culture 

 cannot afford to neglect any of them. The special one for 

 the inauguration of which we are assembled to-day is 

 characteristic of the modern development of biological 

 science. The necessity for such institutions as this has 

 been felt almost simultaneously throughout the cultivated 

 nations of the world. The British Isles, with their exten- 

 sive and varied seaboard, offering marvellous facilities for 

 the investigation of marine life, and with their vast 

 economical interests in the denizens of the waters that bathe 

 their shores, have been rather behind some other countries 

 in adopting this line of research. Let us hope, however, 

 that being so, we may profit by the example and experience 

 of others, and ultimately, as in so many other similar cases, 

 may outrun our neighbours in a department of work for 



