Inauyural Address. 7 



persons. And here let me introduce an illustration which, as it is 

 drawn from the physical sciences will, I hope, be deemed appro- 

 priate. 



In an ideal marine aquarium there would be specimens of very 

 various kinds of creatures. There would be, for instance, the 

 familiar sea anemone, in all its varieties. The anemone is a pretty 

 creature, but more ornamental than active. For it anchors itself 

 securely to its rock in some likely corner, and there enjoys life in 

 its quiet way, by opening its pouch languidly to the flow of the 

 rising tide, and taking in, and let us hope assimilating, such mate- 

 rials as may strike its gastric fancy. Here, too, we should see the 

 lively shrimp, the very opposite of the anemone in his ways and 

 habits, for he seems to have no fixed abode, but skips briskly 

 about from crevice to crevice, and by the pertinacity and success 

 of his commisai'iat has earned the useful title of the scavenger of 

 the ocean. Nor less would the skilful eye glance eagerly round 

 to catch a glimpse at a favourable moment of the sensitive and 

 delicate serpula. The serpula is a very beautiful creature, and 

 when all is still and it thinks no one is looking, it steals daintily 

 forth from its abode, and spreads its tiny coronal of tentacles in 

 the limpid water. If you were to see it you would be reminded of 

 the flowers which the Indian magician causes to grow and bud 

 and blossom in a few minutes under your astonished eyes. But if 

 there be the slightest jar or disturbance of the element, or the 

 least suspicion of a stranger being about the premises, the serpula 

 recoils, like a noiseless spring, into its hole, and leaves you nothing 

 to look at but some rough and colourless corrugations on the back 

 of some neglected shell. It is as though a man should chase a 

 radiant fairy, and find himself suddenly checked in hot pursuit by 

 a hard blank wall. 



Besides these, to be representative, our aquarium must contain 

 its specimens of the hermit crab. Hermit crabs have a good deal 

 to say for themselves, and are not to be despised. Without 

 standing surety for all their ways and propensities, I may at any 

 rate say that I think the hermit crab does wisely in this, that 

 finding himself a thin skinned sort of an animal, with hardly any 

 shell of his own worth speaking of, and yet endowed with an 

 active temperament and a strong desire to climb about among the 

 rocks and all sorts of dangerous places, he hastens to squeeze 

 himself into some vacant shell, where he makes himself thoroughly 

 at home for the time, but, not being a creature of one idea, does 

 not hesitate to change it for a larger one, in due course, if he find 

 that his growing powers suggest the move. 



Last, not least, there are the wonderful corals. I was going to 

 call them beautiful, but it is their work which they make beautiful, 



