854 BiOLoaicAL training and studies. 



somewhat lengthy remarks refer therefore only to systems in which 

 it is proposed that we should have not only a bifurcation but a 

 radical separation of studies and students ; and the moral of this 

 may be summed up by saying that a purely scientific education 

 must be a thoroughly practical one, familiarising the student 

 with actual things as well as with words and symbols. It was 

 upon the solid ground that Antaeus learnt the art of wrestling ; 

 it was only when he allowed himself to be lifted from it that he 

 was strangled by Hercules. 



Coming now to the second part of my address, I beg to say that 

 the word Biology is at present used in two senses, one wider, 

 the other more restricted. In this latter sense the word becomes 

 equivalent to the older, and till recently more currently used word 

 ' Physiology.' It is in the wider sense that the word is used when 

 we speak of this as being the Section of Biology: and this wider 

 sense is a very wide one, for it comprehends, first, Animal and 

 Vegetable Physiology and Anatomy; secondly, Ethnology and 

 Anthropology; and thirdly, Scientific Zoology and Classificatory 

 Botany, inclusively of the Distribution of Species. It may have 

 been possible in former times for a single individual of great powers 

 of assimilation to keep himself abreast of, and on a level with, the 

 advance of knowledge along all these various lines of investigation ; 

 but in those times knowledge was not, and could not, owing to 

 difficulties of intercommunication, the dearness of books, the costli- 

 ness or non-existence of instruments, have been increased at the 

 rate at which it is now being, year by year, increased ; and the 

 entire mass of actually existing and acquired knowledge was of 

 course much smaller, though man's power of mastering it was no 

 smaller than at present. It would now be an indication of very 

 great ignorance if anybody should pretend that his own stock of 

 information could furnish him with something in each one of the 

 several departments of knowledge I have just mentioned, which 

 should be worthy of being laid before such an assembly as this. 

 As will have been expected, I shall not presume to do more than 

 glance at the vegetable kingdom, large as is the space in the 

 landscape of life which it makes. What I propose to do is merely 

 to draw your attention to a very few of the topics of leading interest, 

 which are at the present moment being, or rather will shortly begin 

 to be, discussed by experts in the Department of Physiology and 



