President’s Address. 181 
to coax them into taking an interest in studies for which 
otherwise they would not have the smallest liking. 
But there are, in my mind, very weighty objections to the 
plan, which I shall now briefly notice. 
In the first place, if, as Mr Wood avows, the object be to 
catch Tom, Dick, and Harry, and by “amusing” them to teach 
them to be scientists in spite of themselves, I have very 
grave doubts as to its success. For these pictorial exhibitions 
appeal to a quite different faculty of the human mind than 
the desire for knowledge,—to the dramatic rather than to the 
scientific part of human nature; and the most of our people 
of that class would look at Mr Wood’s groups with the very 
same eye with which they view a wonderfully realistic scene 
in a theatre—a landscape, for instance, with a real waterfall, 
or a marvellously imitated snowstorm—or with feelings akin 
to those with which they hear a successful mimic or ventrilo- 
quist, only it would not be half so entertaining. If you wish 
to amuse people, you should subsidise a theatre at once! Still 
more do I doubt the probability of evolving the future 
Huxleys, Owens, and Gosses out of such material and by such 
means. I do not know enough of the early life of these 
eminent men to be able to say how their scientific faculties 
were first roused into play, but so far as my knowledge 
and experience of such things go, a taste for natural 
history usually makes its appearance at a very early age, 
and is awakened by the fancy being caught by the natural 
objects which occur among our own immediate surroundings. 
Mr Wood speaks of the sublimity of. ignorance to be met 
with in the general public on whose behalf he writes, and 
gives a telling instance of an “ Oxford tutor, since deservedly 
promoted to very high rank in the church,” who was utterly 
astonished on learning that flowers had any connection with 
fruit! Yes, it is true that in this scientific age you will find 
among the most refined and educated classes abundance of 
people who, so far as the most elementary science is concerned, 
might as well be living in the third century. But for this the 
only remedy is the teaching of the elements of science in schools. 
There could have been no science master in the school in 
which Mr Wood’s Oxford tutor received his early training. 
