CAREERS OPEN TO STUDENTS 299 



wayside flower is no longer to your eyes merely a 

 thing of beauty. You have found it to be that and 

 far more — an exquisite organism in which the several 

 parts are admirably designed to promote the growth 

 of the plant and to perpetuate the life of the species, 

 Every insect and bird is now to you an embodiment 

 of the mystery of life. The forces of Nature, once 

 so dark and so dreaded, are now seen by you to be 

 intelligible, orderly and capable of adaptation to the 

 purposes of man. In the physical and chemical 

 laboratories you have been brought into personal 

 contact with these forces, and have learnt to direct 

 their operations, as you have watched the manifold 

 effects of energy upon the infinite varieties of matter. 

 When you have completed your course of study 

 and leave this College, crowned, I hope, with aca- 

 demic distinction, there will be your future career in 

 life to choose and follow. A small number among 

 you may, perhaps, be so circumstanced as to be able 

 to devote yourselves entirely to original scientific re- 

 search, selecting such branches of inquiry as may 

 have specially interested you here, and giving up your 

 whole time and energy to investigation. A much 

 larger number will, no doubt, enter professions where 

 a scientific training can be turned to practical account, 

 and you may become engineers, chemists, or medical 

 men. But in the struggle for existence, which every 

 year grows keener amongst us, these professions are 

 more and more crowded, so that a large proportion 

 of your ranks may not succeed in finding places 

 there, and may in the end be pushed into walks in 

 life where there may be little or no opportunity for 



