98 Transactions of the 



the head is far too large a territory for one worker, so I have 

 selected merely its framework ; the box that contains the brain ; 

 the basket-work of the face ; and the wondrous passages of the ear 

 and nose. All the forms that compose the great sub-kingdom of the 

 vertebrata may be considered as branchings from one stock : the 

 whole group is in one sense a unity. All the forms lead up by 

 many a winding path to man ; they all foreshadow him, and their 

 very existence has no meaning but as seen in the light of him who 

 is the head and chief of all. Therefore, when carefully studying 

 the development of newt and blindworm, spotted snake or thorny 

 hedgehog, we are ever searching for the development of the form 

 of man. I cannot be restricted to the mere animal form ; I must 

 attain to a vision of the highest ; for, by other methods, I am seek- 

 ing the same delight in the contemplation of human beauty as the 

 sculptor or the painter. 



"Be it ounce, or cat, or bear, 

 Pard, or boar with bristled hair," 



— or " the clamorous owl that nightly hoots at our quaint " fea- 

 therless forms ; or the cold and silent fish — in all these leaves of 

 the book of nature I find my members written. If there is one 

 idea which impresses the mind more than another in these researches, 

 it is that these unnumbered forms, all in manifold ways foreshadow 

 and give glimpses of their rightful king. No Fellow of this Society 

 will ask, " To what purpose is all this scientific labour ? " For 

 even setting aside the higher aesthetic and intellectual end, it has 

 the highest value in relation to the healing art. The meaning 

 of life, as life, in all its forms, is the one thing needful to the art 

 and science of medicine ; and all knowledge leading up to light in 

 that division of human work, to us, being what we are, and suffer- 

 ing what we do suffer, must be precious. Yet I hold that all these 

 researches into nature have a still higher value in the education 

 and development of those excellent faculties which are placed within 

 us. They yield immediate pleasure of a refined and a refining kind ; 

 this is an end in itself, and need not be dragged into the category 

 of a means to something further ; yet it is a means to something 

 further, notwithstanding. In making these remarks, I am thinking, 

 not merely of my own narrow headland, which I have endeavoured 

 to make into a dainty bit of garden ; but of the work of this, and of 

 all other societies established for the furtherance of biological re- 

 search. Our own most excellent and beautiful bodies will be slowly 

 but distinctly revealed to us, as to their structure and functions, as 

 we learn more and more of vegetable and animal life. Gradually the 

 hidden meanings will become apparent, and we shall see ourselves to 

 be " parts and proportions of one wondrous whole." I therefore bid 

 God speed to every worker in this vineyard : To him who improves 

 the invaluable instrument with which we, especially, work— the 



