96 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. 



unscientific and rather useless first Medical Examination as part of 

 their first examination for the B.Sc. degree and for diplomas and 

 degrees in agriculture, dentistry, and other subjects. Zoology is part 

 of a syllabus in which half a dozen professors are concerned, and it 

 cannot change with the times without great diflficulty. Our colleagues 

 of other sciences do not want it to change, preferring that a rival subject 

 to attract pupils should remain in a backwash; to be just, each has 

 a firm belief in the subject he knows. For our continuation com'ses, 

 having choked out the more thinking students, we have to go on as 

 we have begun, and we survey the animal kingdom in a more or less 

 systematic manner. We carefully see that all our beasts are killed 

 before we commence upon them ; we deal solely with their compara- 

 tive anatomy, to which are often added some stoiies of 'evolution,' 

 the whole an attempted history of the animal kingdom. There are 

 great educational merits in the study of the comparative anatomy of 

 a group of similar animals, but too often we go to gi'oup after group, 

 tlie student attaining all that is educational in the first, only securinij 

 from each subsequent group more and more facts which might just 

 as well be culled from text-books. 



Students who continue further and take the final honours in zoology 

 specialise in most Univei'sities in their last year in some branch of 

 tlieir science. Such students are usually thinking of the subject from 

 the point of view of their subsequent livelihood. They have to think 

 of what will pay and in what branches there Is, In their University, 

 some teacher from whom they can get special insti-uction. They read 

 up the most modern text-book, examine a few specimens, and are often 

 given the class they desire by examiners who know less of their 

 speciality than they do. They are then supposed to be quahfied both 

 to tench and research in zoology. They teach on the sarno vicious 

 lines, and in research many are satisfied to become mere accumulators 

 oF more facts in regard to dead creatures. 



I have called this address ' Where do we stand ? ' and I hope all 

 who are interested will try to answer this question. Personally I feel 

 that we stand in a most uncomfortable position. In which, to use a 

 colloquialism, we must either get on or get out. I am certain that the 

 progress of humanity requires us to ' get on.' 



Of you in my audience who are not workers in science I ask a 

 final moment of consideration. There is no knowledge of which it 

 is possible to answer the question, ' What is the use of it? ' for only 

 time can disclose what are the full bearings of any piece of know- 

 ledge. Let us not starve pure research because we do not see its 

 immediate application, i often think that if Sir Isaac Newton, at 

 the present day, discovered the law of gravity as a result of watching 

 tlie apples fall, someone would say, ' Oh! interesting, no doubt: but 

 my money will go to the man who can stop the maggots in them.' 



On the one side leads the path of economic research, offering more 

 obvious attractions in the way of rapid results and of greater immediate 

 recognition. That path is one trodden by noble steps, full of sacrifice 

 and difficulty, worthy of treading. But let us view with still greater 

 sympathy and understanding the harder path which leads workers, 



