SECTION D.— ZOOLOGY. 



BIOLOGY AND THE TRAINING OF 

 THE CITIZEN. 



ADDRESS BY 



PROFESSOR J. GRAHAM KERR, F.R.S., 



PRESIDENT OF THE SECTION. 



I PROPOSE in tliis address to depart somewhat from precedent, and to 

 devote it neither to a general review of recent progress in our science, nor 

 to the exposition of my own special views on problems of evolutionary 

 morphology, but rather to a more general subject — -one which I believe 

 to be at the present time of transcendent importance to the future not 

 merely of our nation but, indeed, of our civilisation— namely, the relation 

 of Biology to the training of the future citizen. Speaking as I do from 

 this chair, I need hardly say that by Biology I mean more especially 

 Animal Biology. 



It is unnecessary to emphasise at length the enormously important 

 part which biological science plays in the life of our modern civilised 

 State. The provision of food for the community — crop-raising, stock- 

 breeding, the production of dairy products, fisheries, the preservation of 

 food by canning and freezing, and so on — is obviously an immensely 

 complicated system of applications of biological science. And so also 

 with the maintenance of the health of the community — the prevention 

 of disease, much of which is now known to be due to the machinations of 

 parasitic microbes, often transported and spread by other living 

 organisms, and the cure of disease by the modern developments of medicine 

 and surgery — these again are applications of biological science. When we 

 contemplate merely such simple facts known to everyone, when we see to 

 what an extent the results of biological science are woven in and out 

 through the whole complicated fabric of modern civilisation, when we con- 

 template further the gigantic expenditure in money devoted to the school 

 training of our future citizens, it must surely strike us as an extraordinary 

 fact that biological science enters hardly, if at all, into the school training 

 of our average citizen. 



What I have said, indeed, applies, if only in lesser degree, to the 

 subordinate position occupied by science as a whole in our school training. 

 In the earty stages of human evolution, as we see illustrated on the earth 

 of to-day by those comparatively primitive savages who still remain in 

 the nomadic hunting phase, what we should now call science plays an all- 

 important part in the education of the J^oung individual : he is taught to 

 observe accurately the phenomena of nature, dead and living, to draw 

 the correct conclusions therefrom, and to regulate his actions accordingly. 

 In our own early history science undoubtedly played an equally important 



