200 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION D. 



labours of scientific men, and a greater readiness, in matters where science touches 

 on the common affairs of life, to be guided by the accumulated knowledge and 

 experience of those who have made such matters the subject of constant and 

 devoted study. If the war leads to any repair of the general deficiency in these 

 respects, it will to that extent have conferred a benefit on the community. 



Regarding, as I do, my present position in this Section as a great honour and 

 privilege, especially in view of this being the first meeting of the British 

 Association to be held after the war, I hope I may be allowed a few preliminary 

 remarks of a somewhat autobiographical character. As far iback as I can 

 remember, zoology has been a passion vrith me. I was brought up in a non- 

 zoological environment, and for the first few years of my life my only knowledge 

 of the subject was gained from an odd volume of Chambers's ' Information for the 

 People.' But on being asked by a visitor what I intended to do with myself 

 when I grew up, I can distinctly remember answering, with the confident assur- 

 ance of seven or eight, ' Zoology suits me best ' — pronouncing the word, which 

 I had only seen and never heard, as zoology. By the time I went to school, my 

 opportunities had increased, but I soon found myself engaged in the classical 

 and mathematical routine from which in those days there was little chance of 

 escape. In due course I went to the University with a classical scholarship, 

 which necessitated for the time an even more rigid exclusion of scientific aspira- 

 tions than before. I mention this because I wish to pay a tribute of gratitude 

 to the College authorities of that day, to whose wise policy I owe it that I was 

 eventually able to fulfil in some measure my desire for natural, and especially 

 biological, knowledge. After two years of more or less successful application to 

 the literary studies of the University, I petitioned to be allowed to read for the 

 final school in natural science. The petition was granted ; my scholarship was 

 not taken away, and was even prolonged to the end of my fifth year. This I 

 think was an enlightened measure, remarkable for the time, more than forty 

 years ago, when it was adopted. I only hope that we have not in this respect 

 fallen back from the standard of our predecessors. The avidity with which I 

 took up the study of elementary chemistry and physics, and the enthusiasm 

 with which I started on comparative anatomy under the auspices of George 

 Rolleston are among the most pleasant recollections of my youth. But from the 

 force of circumstances, though always at heart a zoologist, I have never been 

 in a position to give myself unreservedly to that department of biology ; and 

 even now, in what I must call my old age, I fear I cannot regard myself as 

 much more than a zoological amateur. My working hours are largely taken 

 up with serving tables. 



What moral do I draw from this brief recital ? Not by any means that I 

 should have been allowed to escape a grounding in the elements of a literary 

 education, though I think it quite possible that the past, and even the present 

 methods of school instruction are not ideally the best. My experience has led 

 me to conclude that much of the time spent over the minutiae of Greek and 

 Latin grammar might, in the case of the average boy, be better employed. 

 But I do not agree that a moderate knowledge of the classics, well taught by a 

 sensible master, is useless from any reasonable point of view. To those of my 

 hearers who appreciate Kipling, I would call to mind the vividly truthful 

 sketch of school life called 'Regulus.' Let them reflect how the wonderful 

 workmanship of the inspired and inspiring Ode of Horace, round which the 

 sketch is written, must have sunk into the mind of the apparently careless and 

 exasperating ' Beetle,' the ' egregious Beetle ' as King calls him, to bear such 

 marvellous "fruit in after years. Beetle, as we all know, is no professional 

 scholar, no classical pedant, but a man of the world who has not forgotten 

 his Horace, and upon whose extraordinary literary skill those early school-tasks 

 must have had, whether consciously or not, a dominating influence. How else 

 could he have written 'Regulus'? 'You see,' says King, 'that some_ of _ it 

 sticks.' So it does, if it is only given a fair chance; and in the skirmish 

 between King the classical and Hartopp the science master, both right up to a 

 point and both wrong beyond it, I give on the whole the palm to King. To 

 revert to my own case. I do not regi-et a word of either the Latin or the Greek 

 that I was' obliged to read, nor even the inkling of the niceties of scholarship 

 to which I got, I hope, a fair introduction. But I do think that I might have 

 been allowed to start on scientific work at an earlier period, and that a good 



