2 Proceedings of the Royal Physical Society. 



view and criticism. Speculative views are beginning to pre- 

 vail touching the bird's place in nature, the classification of 

 birds, and their migrations, which call for examination. I am 

 afraid we are on the edge of alleged perfect integrations on 

 these questions with insufficient data, and that we are drifting 

 to something like a philosophy of ornithology based on very 

 scant materials indeed. But for several reasons I turned 

 away from this subject. It seemed better fitted for a paper 

 that could be freely discussed than for an address from the 

 chair. I took another topic, and to this I now turn : Books, 

 better than battles, or, indeed, any other feature in the history 

 of a people, indicate the great steps of a nation's progress. 

 Books have their root in, and give expression to, conditions 

 and movements of thought, which, more than mere chronolo- 

 gical data, determine the joints of time — historical periods — 

 in a country, or even over a continent. Looking at the wider 

 area from the point of view of our work as Fellows of this 

 Society, I need only name the " Peri Zoon Historias " of Aris- 

 totle, the " Systema ISTaturse " of Linnaeus, and the " Eegne 

 Animal " of Cuvier, around which the whole history of the 

 natural sciences might be grouped under three great epochs. 

 But this history could not be written to any profit, if its 

 materials were isolated from contemporary aspects of thought 

 outside of the domain of these branches of science. Indeed, 

 few things are more suggestive, in tracing the history of any 

 one branch of knowledge, than the complicated inter-depend- 

 encies and inter-actions which exist between it and others 

 often wide apart. I might illustrate this very fully from a 

 department with which it is my work to be somewhat 

 familiar. Take one instance, not out of place in the presence 

 of a purely scientific society, when given as illustrative merely. 

 I do not think any one could form a just appreciation of the 

 theological thought of Germany, towards the middle of this 

 century and later, who is ignorant of the speculative views of 

 Lamarck — views which, having given their tone to culture in 

 Germany, passed over to America, where they soon made their 

 mark on theology, ultimately leading to the pantheism of 

 Emerson, and the philosophical deism of Tlieodore Parker ; and 

 on science, giving the biased archaeology of Gliddon and JSTott, 



