6 Inaugural Paper, 



will do most for us in this way, but I hope that we shall not shrink 

 from occasionally taking with us some distinct theory around which 

 our observations may be ranged. Nothing adds so much vividness 

 to a pursuit as the luminous guidance of some comprehensive 

 hypothesis; and I confess that 1 shall be glad if some of our papers 

 are devoted to such disputed subjects as the definition of species, 

 the growth or stationariness of instinct, the possession of reason 

 by animals, the consideration of adaptation in nature as due either 

 to direct creation or to the final result of a long series of laws. 



At any rate I am quite sure that in cultivating in ourselves the 

 faculty of observation, we enter with enlightened eyes into a new 

 and unknown world of joy and innocent happiness, — a world among 

 whose quiet and infinite beauties the turbid thoughts may learn to 

 run clear, and the clouded imagination to brighten under the sun- 

 shine. To mirror the divine perfection of those laws which the 

 Infinite Being has imposed upon the Universe, the whole ocean 

 indeed is insufficient, yet a drop of water is enough. In the meanest 

 creature which lives and grows lies a whole world of contemplation, 

 an infinite range of laws only to be discovered by long and patient 

 labour, which both is and brincjn its own reward. To the eye of 

 one who loves wisdom nothing is common or unclean ; the black 

 and dingy insect which cruelty crushes and at which affectation 

 screams, becomes to him a study, which shall leave him more hap])y 

 and peaceful than before, because more deeply convinced, that the 

 world and all that therein is, is under the direct providence of the 

 All-wise and the All-good. But independently of these high con- 

 siderations such an observer will soon learn that in the difference 

 between an intelligent observation and an unintelligent contempt of 

 the marvels of nature, is involved all the difference between a blank 

 and often misspent vacuity, and a pursuit of boundless interest and 

 incessant variety which he may follow at all times and seasons, and 

 in every climate, from Zembla to Peru. Thousands of English- 

 men whose circumstances have thrown them into distant countries, 

 have bitterly complained that their boyhood, and all that happy 

 time in which especially and most successfully knowledge can be 

 acquired, was passed in complete and absolute ignorance of one 

 and all of those natural sciences with which if they had been 

 acquainted they could have made a distinct and immense contribu- 

 tion to the knowledge of the world. And many English clergymen 

 forced to spend their lives almost without society have bewailed a 

 similar loss. Professor Henslow used to say that when first he 

 went to live in a country parish, nothing but his knowledge of 

 botany could have saved him from a miserable dulness, which 

 would have half driven him to despair. In my own boyhood, passed 

 as it was in a deeply interesting neighbourhood with all the trea- 



