10 Address of the Vice-President. 



1. The relationship or connection between Archaeology 

 and the other objects of the Society. 



2. What is comprehended in Archaeology, or the study 

 of Antiquities ; and 



3. What are the principal articles of Antiquarian interest 

 in the Society's district. 



This Society professes to have in view two objects — 

 Natural History and Antiquities. But for practical working, 

 it . seems more convenient, and ulso more agreeable to the 

 constitution of the Society, to distribute its objects into three 

 branches or departments — namely. Geology, Zoology, and 

 Archeology. 



Geology, with Mineralogy and Palaeontology, has in view 

 the material earth, with all its ingredients and conditions ; 

 Zoology — taking that term in a large sense, — is the depart- 

 ment of life, whether of plants or animals ; and Archaeology 

 regards physical objects as they bear the marks of human 

 skill and intelligence. 



This extended use of the term Zoology is not altogether 

 unauthorised. For, besides its etymological derivation, and 

 our own word Zoophyte, meaning an animated plant, to de- 

 scribe a class of beings which partake both of the plant and 

 the animal, we find the poet Theocritus describing ivy, in 

 what we call its fresh and green state, as living ivy. 



In these three departments so understood, the first is the 

 ■department of still nature, — the great theatre of action, 

 where life, in all its wondrous variety, displays itself ; the 

 second department is that of animated nature, where life is 

 to be seen in all its forms, from its first rudiments to its 

 highest developments ; and the third is the department of 

 antiquities, where we are to examine all that bears the 

 marks and impress of human skill and intelligence — the skill 

 and intelligence of the highest order of the animal creation. 



By this threefold distribution of the objects of the Society, 

 a department may be assigned, with, perhaps, great beneficial 

 effect, to each of the three Vice-Presidents, — one of them 



