( vii ) 



pleasure from their writiDgs or conversation ; while the 

 mathematician, the astronomer, the physicist, the chemist, 

 the biologist, and the student of descriptive natural history 

 meet with few, comparatively, who can sympathize with 

 them in their pursuits, or who have a sufficient knowledge 

 of their particular subjects to be able to award them that 

 intelligent appreciation and encouragement essential to 

 their sustained and laborious efforts. To them, the world 

 consists of a few individuals, to whom they are to look for 

 that critical judgment of their merits which is to be finally 

 adopted by the general public, and with these it is of the 

 first importance that they should have more frequent inter- 

 course than that which arises from casual meetings. 



Furthermore, a society of this kind becomes a means 

 of instruction to all its members, the knowledge of each 

 becoming, as it were, the knowledge of the whole. Again, 

 there is a common bond of union between all branches of 

 science, since they all relate to the existence and laws of 

 the same universe in which the more we extend our know- 

 ledge the more we find of "unity in the midst of infinite 

 diversity." This connection is obvious in the relations of 

 astronomy, mathematics, and physics, as well as in those 

 of geology, chemistry, and biology, which are so closely 

 related in many cases as to be separable only by conven- 

 tional limits. In a society, therefore, like the one in ques- 

 tion, embracing in its objects, as it does, all brantjhes of 

 science, each investigator may find others cultivating fields 

 separated from his own by insensible degrees, from whom 

 he can have not only full sympathy and adequate appre- 

 ciation, but also, in many instances, important suggestions 

 and essential aid. 



The governing body of such a society, in order that the 



