Scientific Societies. 17 



Thursday, March 7th, 1867. 



The Twenty-third Meeting of the Society was held at the Rev. F. 

 W. Favrar's House. 



Mahon and Davidson lui., were elected members of the 

 Society. 



The following presents to the Society were- exhibited : — 



An Emu's Skin .. . . . . . . By W. Willis. 



Models of Indian fruits and of people of diflferent tribes inhabiting India. 



By R. a. Willis. 



The other objects exhibited were :■ — 



Linnaea Borealis 



Volvox Globator . . . . . . By Me. Faerar. 



Crocodile Mummy 



Petrified Wood from the desert . . . . By Ayre. 



Mr. Farrar then read the following paper on 



SCIENTIFIC SOCIETIES. 



It is daily beginning to be more and more widely recognized that 

 no man who is wholly unacquainted with the history and results 

 of science can any longer be regarded as a completely educated 

 man. It is the first requisite of a national education, that it should 

 be in harmony with the spirit of the age, and that it should repre- 

 sent the existing state of knowledge ; but unquestionably literature 

 alone is inadequate to represent that rpiKvfxia — nay, that Jiuctus 

 decumanus of knowledge, which of late years has surged so 

 magnificently upon the shores of hiunan life — which has left the 

 mark of its spring tide so high up upon the cliff, and strewn the 

 sands with the spoils of a hundred strata which hitherto had been 

 concealed from human ken. The poet Sophocles sang, in his 

 lovely and memorable chorus, about man, the crown and wonder 

 of creation, who had tamed the steed and framed the laws of 

 cities and recognized the power and mystery of his own intelligent 

 existence : but it would require a poet of a range of genius beyond 

 that of Sophocles himself, to frame a right paean in honour of 

 man's recent progress. Could he have learnt what science has 

 done of late, he would have deemed himself rapt in vision into 

 some island of the blest. Accustomed to these benefits from 

 infancy, we are unable to estimate their blessedness and import- 

 ance ; but had the shade of Sophocles been present at the last 

 c 



