DR Douglas's address. 249 



Teachers would find it liiglily useful in the moral and intellectual 

 training of children to call their ohservant faculties into action, and to 

 point out to their opening minds the beautiful and wonderful adaptation 

 of means to particular ends, which are constantly to be observed in the 

 works of creation. It cannot surely be undeserving the attention of 

 man to investigate and enquire into the nature and uses of objects, 

 which the Almighty has in his infinite wisdom thought fit to call into 

 existence. Habits of observation and discrimination are those which 

 teachers so constantly labour to instil into their pupils, and from no 

 study would they derive more assistanco in forming their minds than 

 from Natural History, a science wholly dependent on accuracy of 

 observation and correctness of discrimination. To many men it has 

 through life been matter of deep regret, that less attention had been 

 paid to their early education in this respect. Men are often placed in 

 circumstances in which such knowledge would not only prove agree- 

 able but highly advantageous to them ; and had Natural History no 

 other charm, it tends to raise the thoughts and exalt the mind of man 

 from grovelling pursuits to a contemplation of the Author, not only of 

 his own existence, but of the whole material universe. 



Note. — The naked nudibranchial moUusk alluded to in p. 244, is described in 

 Dr Johnston's MSS. under the name of Polycera Lindisfaniice, but it is probably 

 a variety of the Polycera crlstata of Alder in the Annals of Natural History, vol. 

 vi. p. 340, pi. ix. fig. 10, 11 ; the description of which was not published at the 

 date of the Club's meeting. 



