TRANSACTIONS OK SECTION D. G67 



Section D.— ZOOLOGY. 

 Peesident of the Section — Professor L. C. Miale, F.R.S. 



THURSDAY, AUGUST 19. 

 The President delivered the following Address : — 



It has long been my conviction that we study animals too much as dead things. 

 We name them, arrange them according to our notions of their likeness or 

 unlikeness, and record their distribution. Then perhaps we are satisfied, forgetting 

 that we could do as much with minerals or remarkable boulders. Of late years 

 we have attempted something more ; we now teach every student of Zoology to 

 dissect animals and to attend to their development. This is, I believe, a solid and 

 lasting improvement; we owe it largely to Huxley, though it is but a revival of 

 the method of Dollinger, who may be judged by the eminence of his pupils and 

 by the direct testimony of Baer to have been one of the very greatest of biological 

 teachers. But the animals set before the young zoologist are all dead ; it is much 

 if they are not pickled as well. When he studies their development, he works 

 chiefly or altogether upon continuous sections, embryos mounted in balsam, and 

 wax models. He is rarely encouraged to observe live tadpoles or third-day chicks 

 with beating liearts. As for what Gilbert White calls the life and conversation of 

 animals, how they defend themselves, feed, and make love, this is commonly passed 

 over as a matter of curious but not very important information ; it is not reputed 

 scientific, or at least not eminently scientific. 



Why do we study animals at all ? Some of us merely want to gain practical 

 skill before attempting to master the structure of the human body ; others hope to 

 qualify themselves to answer the questions of geologists and farmers ; a very few 

 wish to satisfy their natural curiosity about the creatures which they find in the 

 wood, the field, or the sea. But surely our chief reason for studying animals ought 

 to be that we would know more of life, of the modes of growth of individuals and 

 races, of the causes of decay and extinction, of the adaptation of living organisms to 

 their surroundings. Some of us even aspire to know in outline the course of life 

 upon the earth, and to learn, or, failing that, to conjecture, how life originated. 

 Our own life is the thing of all others which interests us most deeply, but every- 

 thing interests us which throws even a faint and reflected light upon human life. 

 Perhaps the professor of Zoology is prudent in keeping so close as he does to the 

 facts of structure, and in shunning the very attempt to interpret, but while he wins 

 safety he loses his hold upon our attention. Morphology is very well ; it may be 

 exact ; it may prevent or expose serious errors. But Morphology is not an end in 

 itself. Like the systems of Zoology, or the records of distribution, it draws 

 whatever interest it possesses from that life which creates organs and adaptations. 

 To know more of life is an aim as nearly ultimate and self-explanatory as any 

 purpose that man can entertain. 



Can the study of life be made truly scientific ? Is it not too vast, too inacces- 

 sible to human faculties ? If we venture into this alluring field of inquiry, shall 



