X. 



BIOGENESIS AND ABIOGENESIS. 



(THE PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS TO THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION FOR 

 THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE FOR 1870.) 



IT has long been the custom for the newly installed 

 President of the British Association for the Advance- 

 ment of Science to take advantage of the elevation of 

 the position in which the suffrages of his colleagues had, 

 for the time, placed him, and, casting his eyes around 

 the horizon of the scientific world, to report to them 

 what could be seen from his watch-tower; in what 

 directions the multitudinous divisions of the noble army 

 of the improvers of natural knowledge were marching ; 

 what important strongholds of the great enemy of us all, 

 ignorance, had been recently captured ; and, also, with 

 due impartiality, to mark where the advanced posts of 

 science had been driven in, or a long-continued siege had 

 made no progress. 



I propose to endeavour to follow this ancient precedent, 

 in a manner suited to the limitations of my knowledge 

 and of my capacity. I shall not presume to attempt a 

 panoramic survey of the world of science, nor even to 

 give a sketch of what is doing in the one great province 

 of biology, with some portions of which my ordinary 

 occupations render me familiar. But I shall endeavour 

 to put before you the history of the rise and progress of 



