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perfect, as it often fails t(i satisfy a fourth and most important 

 law, viz. : — that the characteristics selected should be natural, 

 fixed, and important characteristics, not accidental or trivial ones. 

 I select from my botany an instance — (a) Stem woolly, (/;) stem 

 hairy. Now, it is possible to find specimens of varying degrees of 

 wooUiness, and I have observed the same plant under difterent 

 conditions of age, soil, and aspect exhibit the greatest extremes in 

 these conditions. The characteristics chosen should be, as far as 

 jiossililc, such as are most persistent and determinative. A great 

 deal of work remains to he done in botany for the perfection of 

 the system, and in some of the other branches of Natural Science 

 the classification has scarcely been commenced, the method used 

 being merely arbitrary. Here, then, is an open field for your 

 labours ; you may assist in bringing the great masses of accumuhated 

 facts into scientific order, in making a subject which is only open 

 to a few, because of its intricacy and indeterminate nature, open 

 to the general study of all, and attractive because of its orderly and 

 systematic arrangement. The Avork of the field naturalist is apt 

 to become that of a mere collector, providing the material for other 

 minds to study ; but you may at the same time learn the connection 

 between the host of apparently disconnected sjiecies and individuals, 

 you may study the evolution of the type, the adapting of itself 

 to its special environment, the modification of shape, colour, or 

 method of reproduction to the conditions which best assist its 

 development. 



This, I claim, should be the object of the naturalist, to unite 

 in one grand whole the heterogeneous collection of characteristics 

 which the A'arious stages show. 



There is an attitude of mind I have often noticed and always 

 failed to understand. There are some people who like to regard 

 everything from the point of view of the mysterious, or the 

 miraculous, or the inexplicable. As long as we do so they are 

 interested, Init as soon as we begin to find or to show that all is 

 the result of very definite and fixed laws, they seem to lose all 

 interest. " Is that all ?" they said. You perhajjs are watching an 

 expert conjurer, wlio perhaps causes a handkerchief he lield in 

 his hand to disapi)ear, "to vanish." They i>erhaps make tlie 

 discovery that he had it in his hand all the time, and then they 

 are disappointed. Or he produces a marvellous assortment of 

 articles apparently ironi nowhere, fiowers out of a hat, and, to give 

 an example, they are disapi)ointed because, say they, "I saw him 

 buy those very flowers at Strike's." I was once in company with 

 an old and exi)erience(l field botanist, and another gentleman who 

 was no student of Natural Science. The botanist remarked on 



