ON BIO-GEOLOGY. " 



I AM not sure that the subject of my address is rightly 

 chosen. I am not sure that I ought not to have post- 

 poned a question of mere natural history, to speak to 

 you as scientific men, on the questions of life and 

 death, which have been forced upon us by the awful 

 warning of an illustrious personage's illness ; of pre- 

 ventible disease, its frightful prevalency; of the 

 200,000 persons who are said to have died of fever 

 alone since the Prince Consort's death, ten years ago ; 

 of the remedies ; of drainage ; of sewage disinfection 

 and utilisation ; and of the assistance which you, as a 

 body of scientific men, can give to any effort towards 

 saving the lives and health of our fellow-citizens from 

 those unseen poisons which lurk like wild beasts 

 couched in the jungle, ready to spring at any moment 

 on the unsuspecting, the innocent, the helpless. Of 

 all this I longed to speak ; but I thought it best only 

 to hint at it, and leave the question to your common 

 sense and your humanity ; taking for granted that 

 your minds, like the minds of all right-minded English - 

 * An Address given to the Scientific Society of Winchester, 1871. 



