Anniversary Meeting of the %oological Club, 225 



science, will not suffer by a comparison with the best of the 

 productions of the old world. 



One more topic of congratulation remains to be noticed. I 

 referred to it when I began to address you ; and I return to 

 it with heartfelt interest in my closing words. I allude to the 

 establishment of the Zoological Society. On the eve of the 

 dissolution of this club, it is a theme not merely of conso- 

 lation but of triumph, that we have been the embryo of that 

 higher body which has now sprung into the perfect form. 

 The individuals who are now about to separate will carry in 

 their recollection, to their latest day, the share which they have 

 had in this great consummation. The occurrences of those 

 evenings will ever be vivid in their memory, when, in con- 

 junction with the illustrious founder and first president of that 

 Society, they suggested the auspiciousness of the times for 

 such an undertaking, and the probability, I should say, the 

 certainty, of success. With what delight have we dwelt upon 

 the words of that great man, when, with an intelligence that 

 in a less enlightened age might have passed for a spirit of 

 prophecy, he portrayed, even to the minutest details, the 

 plans and the hopes which we have since seen realised. Time 

 presses, and already I have engrossed too much of your atten- 

 tion, or I should indulge myself in dwelling upon the qualifi- 

 cations that pointed out Sir Stamford Raffles, as the individual 

 most fitted to organise and preside over such a national un- 

 dertaking. I should speak of that comprehensiveness of mind 

 which embraced, as if by intuition, the entire of every subject 

 to which it applied itself, — that promptness of spirit, which 

 executed as soon as it conceived, — that total prostration of 

 all selfish feelings, which acknowledged no interests but those 

 of the great cause he espoused. Transcendent as were his 

 other qualities, this last, perhaps, is that to which we may 

 refer with the deepest satisfaction. Beautiful, indeed, it is to 

 contemplate the enthusiasm with which he devoted himself 

 to the cause, — while more cautious calculators were coldly 

 watching the tide of events, prepared to retreat in misfortune, 

 but ready in case of success to " swell the triumph and par- 

 take the gale," — that entire devotedness, I^^repeat, with which, 

 listening not to such timid suggestions, but making " one 

 great offering " of his time, his talents, and his energetic ex- 

 ertions, he laid them, with all-confiding homage, before the 

 shrine of the science he worshipped. 



Nor was the confidence misplaced, or the sacrifice abortive. 

 He is gone, — but his spirit and energy survived ; and the 

 results appear in the great work before you. On these I need 

 not dwell : you have yourselves witnessed the gradual pro- 



