VI PRESt7)ENT S ADDRESS. 



uianner. and I look forward to the Associates of to-day becoming 

 some of our most nseful members in years to come. I woiild 

 urge them one and all to make full use of their privileges, and 

 particularly to take advantage of the Friday Evening Meetings 

 which already have proved of great use to those who have 

 attended them. These meetings are more conversational than 

 our ordinary meetings, and occasionally are devoted to the 

 exhibition of manipulative processes, such as mounting 

 specimens for the microscope, the illumination of objects 

 under the microscope, etc., regarding which and other equally 

 important subjects some of our more experienced members 

 freely impart what it has cost them years of labour to 

 obtain. Zoology, Geology, Microscopy, and Botany, each 

 in turn is dealt with by an expert. Such arrangements 

 as these are calculated to be of general service, and will, I 

 trust, be long continued. 



No one who has any real knowledge of any branch, or of 

 any twig of any branch of Natural Science, will trouble to 

 answer the ever-recurring inquiry of those who, knowing 

 nothing of the world of wonders by which we are surrounded, 

 and of which we ourselves are a part, and caring nothing for 

 the mysteries and marvels of created things, ask at every turn 

 cui bono / They can justify the emplo^mient of a lifetime in the 

 study of the literature of Greece and Eome, but can have no 

 patience with those who are striving to read and understand a 

 chapter — or, it may be, only a page — in the everlasting Book of 

 Life. Fortunately, the effect of Darwin's, Spencer's, and 

 Huxley's teachings has rendered it less needful now than 

 formerly, to enter into any justification of such studies, 

 and the number is increasing by whom " the phenomena of 

 nature are regarded as one continuous series of causes and 

 efi'ects," and who entertain the opinion that " the ultimate 

 object of science is to trace out that series fi'om the term that is 

 nearest to us, to that which is at the fui'thest limit accessible to 

 our means of investigation. The course of nature as it is, as it 

 has been, and as it will be, is the object of scientific inquiiy."- 



♦Huxley's " The Crayfish, an introduction to the Study of Zoology," p. 3. 



