PRESIDENT S ADDRESS. Xlll 



spread out, forming the splendid garment it now is, perfect, but 

 perhaps to become yet more perfect ; tliat its work is automatic, 

 and that it has written, and is still writing, in its every form 

 and fashion, the history of its growth. 



Let us hear what was said by one who took the latter view, 

 and was the tirst to propound a well-considered and coherent 

 theory of the development of organic life : 



" Organic life beneath the shoi'eless waves 

 Was born, and nursed in ocean's pearly caves ; 

 First, forms minute, unseen by spheric glass, 

 Move on the mud or pierce the watery mass ; 

 Then as succesive generations bloom, 

 New forms acquire, and larger limbs assume ; 

 Whence countless groups of vegetation spring, 

 And breathing realms of fin and feet and wing." 



So wrote Dr. Erasmus Darwiii, of Lichfield, the pioneer of 

 the evolutionists, whose works were highly valued by his con- 

 temporaries as poetry, but the point of whose philosophy was 

 altogether missed by them, for he was before his age. A little 

 while ago his works appeared to be consigned to a well-merited 

 obscui'ity, notwithstanding the}^ abounded with original obser- 

 vations and reflections. Now, interest in them is again revived, 

 but it is transferred from the poetry to the science. Dr. 

 Darwin's philosophy was the antithesis of that of Eay, who 

 wi'ote " The Wisdom of God in Creation " — a book on the 

 evidences of Design — but as Botanists they had common interests, 

 and the same stretch of couutiy must have been familiar to 

 both, as Middleton is not far from Lichfield. 



Darwin was accustomed to travel over the country in his 

 carriage, or on the old horse that ran loose behind, ready to be 

 mounted when the roads became too bad to drive. Kay must 

 have vralked over the district, but he appears to have taken his 

 " simpling '' journeys on horseback. 



Dr. Darwin was a prominent member of the cele- 

 brated Birmingham Lunar Society in the Augustan age of 

 Birmingham science ; Watt, Priestley, and, I believe, Wedgwood 

 were the greater lights. Among the lesser, the eminent Botanist 

 Dr. Withering, of the Old Square and of Edgbaston Hall, had a 



