156 ON BIO-GEOLOGY. [vn. 



men, have been of late painfully awakened to its 

 importance. It seemed to me almost an impertinence 

 to say more in a city of whose local circumstances I 

 know little or nothing. As an old sanitary reformer, 

 practical, as well as theoretical, I am but too well 

 aware of the difficulties which beset any complete 

 scheme of drainage, especially in an ancient city like 

 this ; where men are paying the penalty of their prede- 

 cessors' ignorance ; and dwelling, whether they choose 

 or not, over fifteen centuries of accumulated dirt. 



And, therefore, taking for granted that there is 

 energy and intellect enough in Winchester to conquer 

 these difficulties in due time, I go on to ask you to 

 consider, for a time, a subject which is growing more 

 and more important and interesting, a subject the 

 study of which will do much towards raising the field 

 naturalist from a mere collector of specimens as he 

 was twenty years ago to a philosopher elucidating 

 some of the grandest problems. I mean the infant 

 science of Bio-geology the science which treats of the 

 distribution of plants and animals over the globe, and 

 the cause of that distribution. 



I doubt not that there are many here who know far 

 more about the subject than I; who are far better read 

 than I am in the works of Forbes, Darwin, Wallace, 

 Hooker, Moritz Wagner, and the other illustrious men 

 who have written on it. But I may, perhaps, give a 

 few hints which will be of use to the younger members 

 of this Society, and will point out to them how to get 

 a new relish for the pursuit of field science. 



Bio-geology, then, begins with asking every plant 

 or animal you meet, large or small, not merely What 

 is your name ? That is the collector and classifier's 



