Notes and Comments. 339 
times of years of effort.and design. ‘To tell him that he must 
not pursue that inquiry further because he cannot foresee a 
direct and immediate application of the knowledge he would 
acquire, is, I believe, almost always a course detrimental to the 
real interests of the applied science. I could name specific 
instances where in other countries thoroughly competent and 
zealous investigations have by the short-sightedness of superior 
officials been thus debarred from following to their conclusion 
researches of great value and novelty.’ 
THE STUDY OF ZOOLOGY. 
in his Presidential address to the Zoological Section, Prof. 
D’Arcy W. Thompson referred to the present position of the 
study of zoology. He pointed out that so far are biologists 
from being nowadays engrossed in practical questions, in 
applied and technical zoology, to the neglect of its more recon- 
dite problems, that ‘there never was a time when men thought 
more deeply or laboured with greater zeal over the fundamental 
phenomena of living things ; never a time when they reflected 
in a broader spirit over such questions as purposive adaptation, 
the harmless working of the fabric of the body in relation to 
environment, and the interplay of all the creatures that people 
the earth ; over the problems of heredity and variation ; over 
the mysteries of sex, and the phenomena of generation and 
reproduction, by which phenomena, as the wise woman told, or 
reminded, Socrates, and as Harvey said again (and for that 
matter, as Coleridge said, and Weismann, but not quite so well) 
—by which, as the wise old woman said, we gain our glimpse 
of insight into eternity and immortality. These then, together 
with the problem of the Origin of Species, are indeed magnalia 
nature ; and I take it that enquiry into these, deep and wide 
research specially directed to the solution of these, 1s charac- 
teristic of the spirit of our time, and is the pass-word of the 
younger generation of biologists.’ 
OUR LOST ETHNOLOGICAL OPPORTUNITIES. 
To the Anthropological Section, Dr. W. H. R. Rivers pointed 
out how largely science had suffered as a result of our lost 
opportunities. ‘It is cruel irony that just as the importance 
of the facts and conclusions of ethnological research is 
becoming recognised, and just as we are beginning to earn 
sound principles and methods for use both in the field and in 
the study, the material of our science is vanishing. Not only 
is the march of our own civilisation into the hitherto undisturbed 
places of the earth more rapid than it has ever been before, but 
this advance has made more easy the spread of other destroying 
agencies. In many parts of such a region as Melanesia, it 
is even now only from the old men that any trustworthy in- 
rgtr Oct. r. 
