4 BEPORT — 1893. 



country in the world, which has profited more — vastly more — by science 

 than any other, England stands alone in the discredit of refusing the 

 necessary expenditure for its development, and cares not that other nations 

 should reap the harvest for which her own sons have laboured. 



It is surely our duty not to rest satisfied with the reflection that 

 England in the past has accomplished so much, but rather to unite and 

 ao-itate in the confidence of eventual success. It is not the fault of 

 governments, but of the nation, that the claims of science are not recog- 

 nised. We have against us an overwhelming majority of the community, 

 not merely of the ignorant, but of those who regard themselves as edu- 

 cated, who value science only in so far as it can be turned into money ; 

 for we are still in great measure — in greater measure than any other — a 

 nation of shopkeepers. Let us who are of the minority — the remnant 

 who believe that truth is in itself of supreme value, and the knowledge of 

 it of supreme utility — do all that we can to bring public opinion to our 

 side, so that the century which has given Young, Faraday, Lyell, Darwin, 

 Maxwell, and Thomson to England, may before it closes see us pre- 

 pared to take our part with other countries in combined action for the 

 full development of natural knowledge. 



Last year the necessity of an imperial observatory for physical 

 science was, as no doubt many are aware, the subject of a discussion in 

 Section A, which derived its interest from the number of leading 

 physicists who took part in it, and especially from the presence and active 

 participation of the distinguished man who is at the head of the National 

 Physical Laboratory at Berlin. The equally pressing necessity for a 

 central institution for chemistry, on a scale commensurate with the 

 practical importance of that science, has been insisted upon in this 

 Association and elsewhere by distinguished chemists. As regards 

 biology I shall have a word to say in the same direction this evening. 

 Of these three requirements it may be that the first is the most pressing. 

 If so, let us all, whatever branch of science we represent, unite our efforts 

 to realise it, in the assurance that if once the claim of science to liberal 

 public support is admitted, the rest will follow. 



In selecting a subject on which to address you this evening I have 

 followed the example of my predecessors in limiting myself to matters 

 more or less connected with my own scientific occupations, believing 

 that in discussing wbat most interests myself I should have the best 

 chance of interesting you. The circumstance that at the last meeting of 

 the British Association in this town. Section D assumed for the first time 

 the title which it has since held, that of the Section of Biology, suggested 

 to me that I might take the word ' biology ' as my starting-point, giving 

 you some account of its origin and first use, and of the relations which 

 subsist between biology and other branches of natural science. 



