402 



NATURE 



[August 26, 1897 



SECTION D. 



Opening Address by Prof. L. C. Miall, F.R.S., 

 President of the Section. 



It has long been my conviction that we study animals too 

 wnuch as dead things. We name them, arrange them according 

 to our notions of their likeness or unlikeness, and record their 

 -distribution. Then perhaps we are satisfied, forgetting that we 

 'Could do as much with minerals or remarkable boulders. Of 

 Jate years we have attempted something more ; we now teach 

 •every student of Zoology to dissect animals and to attend to 

 their development. This is, I believe, a solid and lasting im- 

 iprovement ; we owe it largely to Huxley, though it is but a 

 revival of the method of DolHnger, who may be judged by the 

 •eminence of his pupils and by the direct testimony of Baer to 

 have been one of the very greatest of biological teachers. But 

 the animals set before the young zoologist are all dead ; it is 

 anuch if they are not pickled as well. When he studies their 

 .development, he works chiefly or altogether upon continuous 

 sections, embryos moimted in balsam, and wax models. He is 

 d-arely encouraged to observe live tadpoles or third-day chicks 

 with beating hearts. As for what Gilbert White calls the 

 .life and conversation of animals, how they defend themselves, 

 feed, and make love, this is commonly passed over as a matter 

 •of curious but not very important information ; it is not reputed 

 rscientific, or at least not eminently scientific. 



Why do we study animals at all ? Some of us merely want 

 to gain practical skill before attempting to master the structure 

 of the human body ; others hope to qualify themselves to answer 

 rthe questions of geologists and farmers ; a very few wish to satisfy 

 'their natural curiosity about the creatures which they find in the 

 wood, the field, or the sea. But surely our chief reason for 

 studying animals ought to be that we would know more of life, 

 of the modes of growth of individuals and races, of the causes of 

 decay and extinction, of the adaptation of living organisms to 

 their surroundings. Some of us even aspire to know in outline 

 ithe course of life upon the earth, and to learn, or, failing 

 that, to conjecture, how life originated. Our own life is the 

 thing of all others which interests us most deeply, but every- 

 ,thing interests us which throws even a faint and reflected 

 light upon human life. Perhaps the professor of Zoology is 

 prudent in keeping so close as he does to the facts of structure, 

 and in shunning the very attempt to interpret, but while he wins 

 safety he loses his hold upon our attention. Morphology is very 

 well ; it may be exact ; it may prevent or expose serious errors. 

 But Morphology is not an end in itself. Like the systems of 

 .'Zoology^ or the records of distribution, it draws whatever interest 

 it possesses from that life which creates organs and adaptations. 

 To know more of life is an aim as nearly ultimate and self-ex- 

 planatory as any purpose that man can entertain. 



Can the study of life be made truly scientific ? Is it not too 

 ■vast, too inaccessible to human faculties ? If we venture into 

 tthis alluring field of inquiry, shall we gain results of permanent 

 ■walue, or shall we bring back nothing better than unverified 

 ■speculations and curious but unrelated facts? 



The scientific career of Charles Darwin is, I think, a sufficient 

 .-answer to such doubts. I do not lay it down as an article of 

 /the scientific faith that Darwin's theories are to be taken as true ; 

 we shall refute any or all of them as soon as we know how ; but it 

 ds a great thing that he raised so many questions which were well 

 iworth raising. He set all scientific minds fermenting, and not 

 only Zoology and Botany, but Palaeontology, History, and even 

 iPhilology bear some mark of his activity. Whether his main 

 conclusions are in the end received, modified, or rejected, the 

 (the eff"ect of his work cannot be undone. Darwin was a bit of a 

 ■sportsman and a good deal of a geologist ; he was a fair anat- 

 •omist and a working systematist ; he keenly appreciated the value 

 of exact knowledge of distribution. I hardly know of any aspect 

 of natural history, except synonymy, of which he spoke with 

 contempt. But he chiefly studied animals and plants as living 

 lacings. They were to him not so much objects to be stuck 

 through with pins, or pickled, or dried, or labelled, as things to 

 Sje watched in action. He studied their difficulties, and recorded 

 their little triumphs of adaptation with an admiring smile. We 

 owe as many discoveries to his sympathy with living nature as to 

 his exactness or his candour, though these too were illustrious. 

 It is not good to idolise even our greatest men, but we should 

 itry to profit by their example. I think that a young student, 

 ianxious to be useful but doubtful of his powers, may feel sure 



NO. 1452, V L 50] 



that he is not wasting his time if he is collecting or verifying 

 facts which would have helped Darwin. 



Zoologists may justify their favourite studies on the ground 

 that to know the structure and activities of a variety of animals 

 enlarges our sense of the possibilities of life. Surely it must be 

 good for the student of Human Physiology, to take one specialist 

 as an example of the rest, that he should know of many ways in 

 which the same functions can be discharged. Let him learn that 

 there are animals (star-fishes) whose nervous system lies on the 

 outside of the body, and that in other animals it is generally to 

 be found there during some stage of development ; that there 

 are animals whose circulation reverses its direction at frequent 

 intervals either throughout life (Tunicata) or at a particular crisis 

 (insects at the time of pupation) ; that there are animals with 

 eyes on the back (Oncidium. Scorpion), on the shell (some 

 Chitonidae), on limbs or limb-like appendages, in the brain- 

 cavity, or on the edge of a protective fold of skin ; that there are 

 not only eyes of many kinds with lenses, but eyes on the prin- 

 ciple of the pin-hole camera without lens at all (Nautilus) and of 

 every lower grade down to mere pigment-spots ; that auditory 

 organs may be borne upon the legs (insects) or the tail (Mysis) ; 

 that they may be deeply sunk in the body, and yet have no inlet 

 for the vibrations of the sonorous medium (many aquatic animals). 

 It is well that he should know of animals with two tails (Cercaria 

 of Gasterostomum) or with two bodies permanently united 

 (Diplozoon) ; of animals developed within a larva which lives 

 for a considerable time after the adult has detached itself (some 

 star-fishes and Nemertines) ; of animals which lay two (Daphnia) 

 or three kinds of eggs (Rotifera) ; of eggs which regularly pro- 

 duce two (Lumbricus trapezoides) or even eight embryos apiece 

 (Praopus^) ; of males which live parasitically upon the female 

 (Cirripedes), or even undergo their transformations, as many as 

 eighteen at a time, in her gullet (Bonellia) ; of male animals 

 which are mere bags of spermcells (some Rotifera, some Ixodes, 

 parasitic Copepods) and of female animals which are mere bags 

 of eggs (Sacculina, Entoconcha). The more the naturalist 

 knows of such strange deviations from the familiar course of 

 things, the better will he be prepared to reason about what he 

 sees, and the safer will he be against the perversions of hasty 

 conjecture. 



If a wide knowledge of animals is a gain to Physiology and 

 every other branch of Biology, what opportunities are lost by 

 our ignorance of the early stages of so many animals ! They 

 are often as unlike to the adult in structure and function as if 

 they belonged to different genera, or even to different families. 

 Zoologists have made the wildest mistakes in classifying larvae 

 whose subsequent history was at the time unknown. The 

 naturalist who devotes himself to life-histories shares the advan- 

 tage of the naturalist who explores a new continent. A wealth 

 of new forms is opened out before him. Though Swammerdam, 

 Reaumur, De Geer, Vaughan Thompson, Johannes Mtiller and a 

 crowd of less famous naturalists have gone before us, so much 

 remains to be done that no zealous inquirer can fail to discover 

 plenty of untouched subjects in any wood, thicket, brook or sea. 



Whoever may attempt this kind of work will find many 

 difficulties and many aids. He will of course find abundant 

 exercise for all the anatomy and physiology that he can com- 

 mand. He will need the systems of descriptive Zoology, and 

 will often be glad of the help of professed systematists. The 

 work cannot be well done until it is exactly known what animal 

 is being studied. For want of this knowledge, hardly attain- 

 able 150 years ago, Reaumur sometimes tells us curious things 

 which we can neither verify nor correct ; at times we really do 

 not know what animal he had before him. The student of 

 life-histories will find a use for physics and chemistry, if he is 

 so lucky as to remember any. Skill in drawing is valuable, 

 perhaps indispensable. 



If by chance I should be addressing any young naturalist who 

 thinks of attending to life-histories, I would beg him to study 

 his animals alive and under natural conditions. To pop every- 

 thing into alcohol and make out the names at home is the 

 method of the collector, but life-histories are not studied in this 

 way. It is often indispensable to isolate an animal, and for this 

 purpose a very small habitation is sometimes to be preferred. 

 The tea-cup aquarium, for instance, is often better than the 

 tank. But we must also watch an animal's behaviour under 

 altogether natural circumstances, and this is one among many 

 reasons for choosing our subject from the animals which are 



1 Hermann von Jhering, Sitz. Bert. Akad., 1885 ; Biol. Centralbl., Bd. 

 vi. pp. 532-539 (1886). 



