Tlie President's Address. By the Rev. W. E. Ballinger. 195 



other revolutions, meant to devour its own children . . . as if the 

 man of science of the future were condemned to diminish into a 

 narrower and narrower specialist as time goes on." 



" I am happy to say," he continues, " that I do not think any 

 such catastrophe a necessary consequence of the growth of science ; 

 but I do think it a tendency to be feared, and an evil to be most 

 carefully provided against. The man who works away at one 

 corner of nature, shutting his eyes to all the rest, diminishes his 

 chances of seeing what is to be seen in that corner; , . . that 

 which the investigator perceives depends much more on that 

 which lies behind his sense-organs than on the object in front of 

 them." 



Now this universal danger in all branches of scientific inquiry 

 is certainly emphasized in a Society like this; and the defence 

 which Huxley indicates " against this tendency to the degeneration 

 of scientific workers " has special reference to such objects and work 

 as we delight to be engaged upon : " it lies in the organization 

 and extension of scientific education in such a manner as to secure 

 breadth of culture without superficiality ; and on the other hand, 

 depth and precision of knowledge without narrowness." In other 

 words, and from our own point of view, exact and exhaustive 

 research in the narrowest fields must be encouraged and fostered ; 

 we must have an increased ambition for it ; but at the same time 

 we must incite ourselves and all our fellow-workers to keep the 

 small and special area closely linked to, and in the strong broad 

 light of, the inconceivably vaster realm of which it is not a separated 

 fragment, but an essential and inalienable factor. 



It is, then — with this admonition in view — to special work that 

 I shall venture to call your attention once more. And I do this 

 with the deeper interest and assurance, because of the manifest 

 relation of the results to the broader aspects of that branch of 

 science to which as work it links itself. 



We all know of the important, if minute, place occupied in 

 modern physiology by the cell-nucleus. From the cell-wall to the 

 cell-contents, and from these to the nucleus specifically, the atten- 

 tion and research of investigators has been directed ; and the results 

 are sought with equal eagerness by the students of vegetable and 

 animal forms. 



It would be beyond my purpose to attempt to summarize the 

 work done in this relatively new field of research. It is, however, 

 chiefly German, and has been obtained almost entirely as the result 

 of careful and laborious study of nuclei of various cells under the 

 influence of reagents ; and therefore, of course, when vitality had 

 ceased. But the results are so promising, so suggestive of other 

 methods, and as I venture to believe so important, that some far- 

 reaching issues may arise in the near future from a close, com- 



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