26 Scientific Societies. 



before Professor Henslow saw thera ; but he, by the knowledge and 

 insight which he brought to bear upon thein, became an immense 

 benefactor to his race. Contrast him with another who caused 

 even a. more ruiuous damage by ignorance than Professor Henslow 

 caused benefit by his knowledge. When Frederick of Prussia 

 was in want of money, a certain Herr Von Korff said that he 

 could supply him with plenty if he might cut down some timber 

 that was no man's property, and was perfectly useless. The king 

 was of course delighted, and Herr Von Korff immediately ordered 

 the forests to be cut down which clothed the sand dunes of the 

 Frische Nehrung on the coast of Prussia. Unluckily he did not 

 know that the fibrous roots of the trees were the sole force that 

 bound the wandering sands together, and formed of them an 

 immovable barrier against the march of the sea waves. No sooner 

 were the forests cut down, than inwards and inwards the sands 

 drifted till whole acres were wasted, and a million pounds' worth 

 of irreparable damage had been accomplished in a few years time. 

 The same thing has happened in the " Fossil barony " of Scotland, 

 and on parts of the Suffolk and Cornish coasts. Thousands of 

 acres have been regained from the sea by planting the birch on the 

 shores of Denmark, the Marot pine in France, and the Ailanthus 

 in Russia. The fibres of the humble Ammophila or Marram grass 

 (of which I here shew you a specimen) serves the same purpose 

 in England, and as people were constantly pulling it up to use 

 the fibres of it for cordage, the roots for fuel, and the seeds to feed 

 poultry, it had actually to be protected by Act of Parliament in the 

 reign of William HI., from the ignorant depredations of those 

 who little knew the mischief they were doing, in extirpating what 

 seemed to them no better than a coarse and useless weed. 



But you must not suppose for a moment that any man of science 

 awoke some fine morning and suddenly found himself made famous 

 by the flash of intuitive genius. Far from it. Infinitely more 

 true is the wise and noble aphorism of Buffon. "ie Genie d est 

 la Patience,''' and the remark of Newton that all his discoveries 

 were due to the single faculty of prolonged and concentrated 

 thought. We hear much of the brilliant discoveries of science ; 

 we hear little of the long years spent in no less brilliant 

 failures. We know of the experiments which were magnificently 

 successful ; we forget the thousands, no less patiently attempted, 

 which came to nought. No man ever yet became famous, no man 

 ever yet became useful, by playing at science. Men may be 

 delighted by her marvels, as the Emperor Maximilian was when 

 Albertus Magnus made the automaton eagle which bent its neck 

 and flapped its wings to greet him ; but it is to the heroic, devoted 

 workers that she reveals the secrets clenched up in her granite 



