136 LESSON FROM BIOLOGICAL STUDIES x 



contemporaries. The particular branch of science which it 

 is my lot to represent is, at first sight, very little specially 

 connected with the general welfare of man, and is looked upon 

 by many as little more than idle speculation or mere curiosity. 

 I well remember though it is certainly many years ago now 

 one who, more than any one else living in this country, 

 has advanced that branch of science Professor Huxley in a 

 lecture delivered at the Eoyal Institution, saying that the 

 common idea of a naturalist was " a wet, dirty man poking 

 about the sea-shore with a net in one hand and a bottle in the 

 other an innocent and perhaps harmless individual, but a very 

 useless one." Well, I may say that the description was made 

 some thirty years ago, before Professor Huxley himself had 

 done so much to raise the character of naturalists and natural 

 history in this country, yet it still holds good in the opinion 

 of many at the present time. You must recollect, however, 

 that the researches of naturalists of that class, men who have 

 occupied themselves in closely observing the ways and habits, 

 and studying the structure of animals of a low type of organisa- 

 tion, have produced already marvellous results upon the happi- 

 ness and welfare of mankind. Through researches of this kind 

 we are obtaining knowledge of the causes and prevention of 

 disease, which, when further advanced, for they are only 

 beginning now, will, I have no doubt, lead to an enormous 

 saving of health and of life. Moreover, through the researches 

 of such naturalists greater results still have been produced. 

 They have produced effects upon our mode of thinking on 

 many subjects on our relations to each other and to the 

 universe effects the end of which we hardly see at present. 

 And they have taught us one great lesson, one that I alluded 

 to in the address which I had the honour of giving here last 

 Wednesday namely, that progress in living nature has been 

 due in great measure to the principle which Darwin most 

 popularised, if he did not first enunciate, which he, at all events, 

 brought into the condition in which we now know it that of 

 the survival of the fittest in the struggle for existence. Now, 

 it is a law in nature that there should be a certain amount 

 of individual differences or variations in the different animals 

 and plants inhabiting the earth, and that the progress from 



