President's Address. 17 



for far-off fowls and fair feathers, and, like young fishers, are 

 apt to cast their lines on the opposite side of the river, though 

 most of the fish which they labour to catch be on the side 

 next themselves. Men in general are too fond of dwellino- 

 on their own superiority over the lower animals. They have 

 neither wings to fly, nor fins to swim; nay, in comparing 

 themselves with insects and quadrupeds, they feel a pride in 

 having only two feet to walk upon ; and as for the reason of 

 which they boast, it leads a few of them, it must be confessed, 

 to a knowledge of God and to the cultivation of arts and 

 sciences, but not a small number to poverty and wretched- 

 ness, to prison, exile, and the gibbet." 



Fleming's " History of British Animals " was published in 

 1828, and its author was perhaps the only naturalist in 

 Britain at that time capable of producing a work on Zoology, 

 including almost every branch of the science. So rapid has 

 been the progress of Zoological Science, however, in the pre- 

 sent century, that the " History of British Animals," unlike 

 the "Syste7na Naturce " of Linnaeus, which passed through 

 thirteen editions in the lifetime of the author, has had no 

 new edition. It has, however, formed the groundwork for 

 many of the admirable monogTaphs on British Zoology which 

 the increase of the science imperatively demanded, and will 

 ever be a monument of the patient research and of the great 

 and varied scientific attainments of its higlily-gifted author. 



Conclusion, — Our work in the future, as it has been in the 

 past, is to render still more perfect those splendid mono- 

 graphs, which confer lustre and honour on our country. As 

 students of Nature, and guided by the same truthful spirit as 

 those illustrious names so briefly and imperfectly alluded to, 

 there are many highly important questions in science as yet 

 undecided. The boundary line betwixt the vegetable and 

 animal kingdom is as invisible to us as it was to Aristotle ; 

 and even the doctrine of spontaneous generation is held to be 

 an open question in science. 



Materials for ample investigation, however, He nearer at 

 hand. The remarkable transformations that occur in large 

 groups among the lower forms of animal and vegetable life, 



VOL. IV. c 



