MAN'S ACCOUNT WITH THE LOWER ANIMALS 19 



where there were no lower animals and no flowers we may be 

 sure that our ideas of beauty would be very different from 

 what they are. 



But if scientific zoology altogether fails to do justice to the 

 aesthetic value of the objects with which it deals it nevertheless 

 serves to enhance the delight which we take in them. The 

 beauty of a flower or of a bird's feather may be recognised to 

 some extent by any fashionable or unfashionable lady who 

 uses it for her personal adornment, but what is the pleasure 

 which she derives from it in comparison with that of the 

 student who knows something of its structure and origin and 

 can give an intelligent account of those attributes which 

 render it delightful in our eyes ? It is a common saying that 

 familiarity breeds contempt, but I can assure you that the 

 more familiar we become with plants and animals, however 

 lowly they may be, the less inclined do we feel to despise them. 



You will remember what Tennyson, who perhaps had a 

 deeper insight into the secrets of nature than any other poet, 

 says on this subject : 



Flower in the crannied wall, 



I pluck you out of the crannies, 



I hold you here, root and all, in my hand, 



Little flower but if I could understand 



What you are, root and all, and all in all, 



I should know what God and man is. 



I leave it to my colleague, Professor Bourne, to deal more 

 adequately with the educational value of zoology, and will only 

 ask you now to consider for a moment what zoological science 

 may have to suggest to us with regard to the future prospects 

 of the human race. 



There is, I have been told, a kind of pilgrimage which con- 

 sists in moving alternately two steps forward and one step 

 back, which must be an extremely irritating method of 

 locomotion. This is the kind of progress which the animal 

 kingdom makes in its journey onwards and upwards through 

 the ages. Higher branches of the great evolutionary tree 

 spring from lower ones, but always from near the base and 



