THE VICTORIAN NATURALIST. ) 
produced ; if for stupidity, stupidity must be forthcoming. We 
may hope that the cynic’s sneer is fast losing its sting—that the 
demand for frivolity, ignorance, or stupidity is getting to be at a 
‘discount ; and to the women of our own day, members of our Club 
or not, we will quote the words of that great master of science, 
Sir Humphrey Davy, in an appeal to women made seventy-four 
years ago: ‘ Let them make it disgraceful for men to be ignorant, 
and ignorance will perish; and that part of their empire founded 
upon mental improvement will be strengthened and exalted by 
time, will be untouched by age, will be immortal in its youth.” 
Of all schools of knowledge alter those »f music, painting, and 
sculpture, natural science is the best adapted for domestication. 
Some departments of intellectual investigation seem to adapt 
themselves more to the study than the parlour—to invite their 
devotees to solitude rather than to company ; but the pleasure of a 
discovery in the world of nature is more than doubled by being 
shared; and the pathway to its mountain heights is made easy 
when travelled in company. In- this colony of ours, with all its 
exuberance of youth, with all its free, wild life, with all its deifica- 
tion of manly sports, the domestication of science will help to 
teach 
That life is not an idle ore, 
But iron dug from central gloom, 
And heated hot with burning fears, 
And dipt in baths of burning tears, 
And batter’d with the shocks of doom. 
We have fallen on utilitarian days. Societies have to show that 
they have a right to existence ; a razson d’étre is demanded from 
all. Our answer to the challenge thrown down then is, that we 
exist for the purpose of popularising science—of fostering a love for 
nature—not by the mere study of what other men have seen or the 
examination of theories propounded by the giants of our race—but 
by examination for ourselves in the field. Not that the study of 
books is to be neglected—none of us can afford to do that—but to use 
our book knowledge as a guide to our field investigation, and 
by actual observation for ourselves to verify or otherwise what books 
have taught us. In this learning we must be content to be patient, 
reverant, childlike, not too hasty, from imperfect data, to jump 
to conclusions—nor yet, when we get undoubted facts, too conserva- 
tive to give up any pre-conceived opinions or theories. Starting 
from our books, going into the field, observing, arranging, theoris- 
ing, we shall need to understand how, on the one hand, to avoid the 
Scylla of wild speculation, and on the other hand the Charybdis of 
mere antiquated and worn out belief. The more we learn the more 
modest we shall doubtless become ; itis the tyros, not the veterans, 
who are sure about everything—the many times that we have to 
