President's Address. 3 



and the not less biased anatomy of Morton. The same line 

 of remark might be followed in regard to the more limited 

 area of one country — our own, for example. But this is not 

 my intention at present. Besides, it would land me in the 

 heart of discussions wholly alien to our work here. I wish, 

 then, to indicate in outline, rapid, sketchy, rough, and broken, 

 the rise and early progress of the natural sciences in Scotland. 

 These include zoology, botany, and geology, chemistry having 

 a place assigned to it as a most influential factor in each, 

 claiming, at the same time, to rank on its own merits as itself 

 a special branch. In this statement, general review, and oc- 

 casional criticism, I shall deal mainly with zoology and 

 geology, and with the former more than tlie latter. 



I need hardly remind you, in the outset, that the method 

 of the Scottish school of science has ever been painstaking 

 observation in order to legitimate induction, and induction in 

 order to the discovery of law. In a word, things have been 

 valued by us chiefly for the thoughts that underlie them. 



The advantage of linking the present with the past is, that 

 we see the foundations of knowledge — we get a history. Now 

 notwithstanding the great influence wielded by Aristotle's 

 works on mediaeval thought, there does not seem to have been 

 any very early practical attempt in Scotland to systematise 

 current forms of the knowledge of nature. Geology, as a de- 

 finite branch of science, is but of yesterday, though we shall 

 see its beginnings in our country were hinted at more than 

 500 years ago, but the hints had long to wait for recognition. 

 Zoology more early compacted into systematic form, though its 

 classification long continued of the most rudimentary kind, 

 and its indications of species hesitating and uncertain. The 

 earliest evidences we have of attention being given to the living 

 forms, in the midst of which men of all times walk, are to be 

 found on sculptured stones, on illuminated manuscripts, or in 

 mediaeval, or post-paido mediasval chronicles. In these, how- 

 ever, the imagination of the observers is generally more 

 marked than their knowledge of the phenomena observed. 

 Beast and bird, reptile and fish, have rank and a place as- 

 signed to them in a system of natural symbolism, whose de- 

 mands, in the long run, led away from the representation of 



