PRESIDENT S ADDEESS. 



thus plead for paltcontology, not alone considered, however, as a field 

 which is most likely to yield us tangible results which shall bo 

 worthy the name of scientific ; and would direct your attention to 

 Avork which may yet be done upon the protoconch, nepionic shell, 

 and shell-growth, to the work already achieved in this direction by 

 Hyatt for the Cephalopoda, and by Jackson and Bernard for the 

 Pelecypoda, and to a laudable attempt which during the year has 

 been made by the Countess von Linden to deal in the manner 

 indicated^ with the phylogeny of shell- ornamentation. 



The determination of the nature of things will ever be impossible 

 to us, with our limited senses ; we can seek but the true reason of 

 phenomena. 



You reply that our vocations and the necessities of life are so 

 varied that we cannot all be palaeontologists and embryologists. 

 True : but we can all meet in this room for mutual interchange of 

 ideas and comparison of notes, which is the next best thing ; and 

 co-operation becomes the more necessary as the field enlarges. When, 

 in this year of our national rejoicing, we reflect upon the resources 

 of the Malacologist of 1837 — Scientific Societies and Journals in 

 their infancy ; for books, Blaiaville, the elder Sowerby, Hanley, 

 Deshayes, Lamarck, costly and scarce ; biological laboratories 

 undreamed of ; the deep sea unknown ; India and Polynesia a sealed 

 book; no Zoological Record; no Herrmann sens' Index of Genera; no 

 Agassiz ; no Marschall ; no Scudder; the difficulties of transport; 

 and, above all, the lack of facility for personal intercourse with our 

 fellow-workers — we are overwhelmed in the realization of progress 

 and our sense of gratitude that in this England of ours the ideal of 

 the world's requirements is most nearly to be found. Without 

 wishing to be disrespectful, I am bold to assert that, to my mind, wo 

 in London, living under conditions such as are not to be obtained 

 elsewhere in the wide world, with the eye of the universe upon us, 

 and looked up to for guidance and authority, are not making the 

 most of our opportunities of intercommunication. Personal interest, 

 which should be the bcfe noir of the man of science, enters too 

 frequently into our considerations; and not a few of our scientific 

 papers which oft appear in private journals would be the better, our 

 progress the healthier, and our task as investigators the easier, for 

 the refining influences of public discussion and the editorial juris- 

 diction of a learned society. 



The earnest student of science leads a charmed life ; and ' work ' 

 is to him something nobler than a compulsory adjunct to the tedium 

 of a round of pleasure ;ind selfishness, since he lives in and for the 

 sacred duty of unravelling the pages of Nature. As a method in 

 Zoology, the inductive is his most reliable ; but so long as he 

 continues to observe, compare, and confirm, rejecting the non- 

 confirmable, remembering that zeal without knowledge is in science 

 futile, and that random rhetoric is not argument, he need have no 



' Cuuutcss .M. vou Liutleu, Zeit. \Yiss. ZooL, Bd. Ixi, p. 2G1. 



