NATURE AND MAN IN THE FORTH VALLEY. To 
found it, even if it be only by one fact, one observation, or 
one just inference. 
A good deal has already been done in working up the 
Natural History of the Forth Valley, largely by this Society. 
The maps and memoirs of the Geological Survey already 
published cover the greater portion of the area, the sheets 
for the Highland District at the head waters of the Forth 
and its tributaries being not yet issued. The fresh-water 
lochs of the Forth basin have been very fully investigated 
by Sir John Murray and the late Mr Fred P. Pullar, while 
the botany, entomology, conchology, and ornithology have 
‘been more or less fully worked up by various scientific 
societies. It is desirable that the results of these efforts 
should be brought together, and some general conclusions 
arrived at, when sufficient information is available. We 
ought never to lose sight of the fact that Nature is one 
whole, and‘indivisible. It is convenient to divide the pro- 
cess of the investigation of Nature into different branches or 
‘sciences, and call them botany, ornithology, geology, and so on. 
But, after all, these divisions are purely arbitrary,and the differ- 
ent sciences overlap at every turn. A botanist, for instance, 
who knows nothing of entomology, geology, or meteorology, 
has only a limited idea of his subject. Geological research 
would have come to a dead stand long ago but for the aid 
-derived from paleontology, which, in its turn, would be an 
impossible science, did we possess no knowledge of living 
forms of plants and animals. Let us not despise the labours 
of the specialist, from whose careful investigation of facts 
-only is it possible to build up a science. But take these 
for granted, and assume that we are not specialists, then our 
wider survey of Nature will be just, adequate, and undis- 
‘torted, only as we are able to consider Nature as a whole, 
rather than as a thing of parts. Emerson has likened 
Nature to a chain of countless rings, The simile is just. 
Each link of the chain is connected through its immediate 
neighbours with the whole series. We wish, then, to take 
a wide survey of the Natural History of the Forth Valley; 
to consider the inter-relations of one fact with another, or 
“one series with another series; to study the intimate con- 
nection that there is between scenery and Natural History 
