28 JOURNAL AND PROCEEDINGS. 



And the pleasure of the study ! Well, I dare not trust myself to 

 describe it. 



To make the subject complete I ought to speak of the best 

 way of studying Biology, but I cannot now; suffice it to say, 

 that the physical sciences can never be mastered as literary accom- 

 plishments are. They can never be mastered by merely reading 

 books or listening to lectures on the subjects, any more than a boy 

 could learn the business of a tea merchant by reading books about 

 China and Japan, or India, or about tea. He has to go into a tea- 

 merchant's office, where he can have the handhng and the smelling 

 and the tasting of the tea. 



I am very much tempted here to go on and speak of our Sec- 

 tion work in general, to tell you, among other things, that I believe 

 the most important work done by the Association, next to the private 

 and personal researches and field work of the individual members, 

 is done in the Sections. I have found it so myself. I will just 

 name one instance. At a meeting of the Biological Section held in 

 the spring, Mr. Turner gave us a homely yet strictly scientific talk 

 about the anatomy of birds. There we sat around the table, and 

 he, with the skeleton and bones of his bird, made the marvellous 

 mechanism of a bird's wing and other parts so plain to us, that I 

 learned more in half an hour on that particular subject than I could 

 possibly have learned from hours of reading, or from many learned 

 lectures or papers on the subject. There the objects themselves 

 forming the subject before us, are handed round, and the words, 

 which are mere symbols, become real because they are linked with 

 the object symbolized. 



What I should like to see in our various sections dealing with 

 the physical sciences is, that there should be such a true idea of the 

 best mode of pursuing them, and such an enthusiasm in the pur- 

 suit, that out of our Association there might arise some who would 

 pursue research into " regions beyond," for in all these fields, and, I 

 might say, in fields that have been partially traversed, there are in- 

 numerable truths beyond the most advanced truth yet known. The 

 why and the wherefore of most things have yet to be discovered. 

 Let us all keep in view the objects of our Association, so that every 

 active member may contribute something to the accumulating sum 

 of human knowledge, and thus add to the sum ot human power and 

 happiness. 



