54 



delicate ground in giving expression to these sentiments ; 

 but as this was the first opportunity he had had, he felt it 

 his duty to express publicly the strong conviction which he 

 entertained on this subject. 



Professor HUXLEY begged leave to second the vote of 

 thanks which had been so well moved by his friend 

 Mr. Wilmot. Unfortunately, he had not had an oppor- 

 tunity of seeing Sir James Maitland's establishment at 

 Howietown, but he had frequently been favoured by 

 reading and hearing what he had done, and thus had the 

 means of knowing not only the nature of his operations, 

 But what was to his mind the singularly precise and 

 accurate scientific spirit which he had brought to his work, 

 and it was the secret of the very remarkable success he. has 

 obtained. In this matter, as in all biological questions, the 

 secret of success lay in attention to. minute details, and 

 that was really the moral of the Paper. You must, in the 

 first place, be able to comprehend precisely which very 

 few people did the exceeding complexity of natural 

 conditions, and then you must know how to carry into 

 practice all the precautions necessary to meet the variation 

 in those conditions. He could not recommend anyone who 

 was endeavouring to acquaint himself with natural history 

 to take up a more useful and valuable study than that of 

 the manner in which Sir James Maitland had carried out 

 his operations with regard to fish culture. He dwelt upon 

 this point the more because, since the time some forty 

 years ago when M. Coste first popularised the notion of 

 fish culture, the idea became prevalent that you only had 

 to carry out artificial impregnation, or the collection of 

 spat in the case of Oysters, and the thing was done. He 

 need not say what disappointment those who first experi- 

 mented in the matter of Oyster culture were destined to 



