THIRTEENTH ANNUAL MEETING. 73 
scraped its valleys three miles deep, and still the shapes various 
and stupendous continue to multiply. The more workers there 
are, the more work remains to be done. Humble clams, worms 
and urchins take on great importance and become marine 
Sphinxes, asking riddles that no one can answer. Creatures that 
once were conveniently dismissed as gelatinous, or gristly, now 
advance’claims to an intricate circulatory system, to muscular 
fibres and to nervous ganglia. Nay, they proudly look down on 
the vertebrates, in the matter of reproduction, as they pass 
gracefully through the varied stages of alternate generation and 
self-division. 
Rondelet lived near a sea whose inhabitants were well calcu- 
lated to excite his wonder and delight. He was professor of 
medicine at Montpellier, not many miles from Aigues-Mortes, 
the port whence St. Louis embarked for his crusade, and whose 
walls, now surrounded by dry land, were in the middle of the 
sixteenth century, still bathed by the waters of the Mediterra- 
nean. The shallows of the bay teemed with the smaller crus- 
tacea and shells, while the open sea beyond was then, as now, 
the home of many fishes, varied in form and brilliant in color 
—the whiting, the red mullet, and the tunny, celebrated by clas- 
sic writers. There, too, were found the darting squids and 
the great-eyed octopus, while from its depths came the rosy 
coral. : 
In the ancient medical school of Montpellier, still hangs the 
portrait of Rondelet in his red gown. He has the grave and 
placid look of a man who was master of his studies, and who 
stood well with science and with the Church. Forhadhe not as 
a patron, Bishop Pelicier? and was he not the first authority in 
zoology and medicine, at a time when a good scholar could ac- 
quire all that was known of these and many things besides? 
Every gain in knowledge has a loss that balances it. As the 
current of human thought grows wider, it becomes also more 
shallow, and splits into that infinitude of little channels which 
now are called specialties. In each of these channels may be 
seen a diligent investigator urging forward his little skiff, and 
well content to be navigating what to him seems the great 
river of truth. 
