President's Address. 7 



animalia quadrupedia et volucres vesjyertiUo est). The sponge 

 had been noticed, but it, too, was a transition form (medium 

 quid inter plantas et aqxiatica animcdia). We smile at the 

 simplicity of these early observers, in localities far outside of 

 the great lines of thought. But might not these guesses be 

 the steps towards that principle of structural gradation which 

 lies at the root of modern classification ? We may say of 

 them what most of us have often had to say of some contem- 

 porary workers — We are grateful for your facts, but would 

 rather not have your philosophy. AVe welcome your data, 

 but would rather dispense with your generalisations. The 

 men of these olden times were, no doubt, quite right when 

 they said that the otter lived equally well either on land or 

 in water ; but when they held its place in nature to be along- 

 side of the frog because of this, their inference was absurd 

 (cdii amphibii uti I/iitra, Rana, etc). Clearly, then, the time 

 at which we have glanced has not much information to give 

 us of any scientific value, though it has much to interest us, 

 as showing how men began to observe. The period was one 

 of comparative haze, under which many good and true things 

 were hidden. What was wanted was warm, strong sunlight 

 to dissipate the haze, and reveal to us that world of beauty, 

 and of order, and of ever active vitality, in all its living 

 forms which lay hid beneath. These men were the heralds 

 of the dawn, but the dawn was not yet, though it was on 

 the threshold; and it began to break in 1527, when Hector 

 Boece, Principal of King's College, Aberdeen, published his 

 " Story and Chronicle of Scotland," a bulky volume, written 

 in Latin, but translated into the Scottish idiom of the upper 

 classes by John Bellenden, Archdeacon of Moray, for behoof 

 of James V., who could not read the original. This work 

 should be interesting to philologists, as an example of the 

 Scottish language of the time, a language which differed so 

 much from the English then current, that it was again trans- 

 lated for behoof of our southern neighbours into the English 

 tongue. But this by the way. 



To estimate the references to natural history wliich abound 

 in Boece's work, we must keep in mind his starting-point. 

 Speaking of himself, he says that " he was singularly addicted 



