416 [Proc. B.N.F.C, 



whole is governed. Reading only, or even collecting specimens 

 can never be effectually substituted for the legitimate work of a 

 Field Naturalist, whose duty it is to court Dame Nature in her 

 own home, and with pick and staff and watchful eye to survey the 

 mountains, explore the valleys, and track out by diligent steps the 

 oft intricate geological phenomenon. It is only in this familiar 

 intercourse that Nature is willing to tell her secrets, and under her 

 influence and inspiration alone can we ever hope to accomplish 

 solid results, and arrive at clear, broad, and thoroughly scientific 

 conclusions. After enforcing the necessity of recording observa- 

 tions, and particularly cultivating a taste for sketching, Mr. Gray 

 continued — The imperfection of all human knowledge, and the 

 limitation of all human experience must involve uncertainty as to 

 special facts, and therefore doubt as to the correctness of general 

 principles. This has been the experience of philosophy during 

 the past history of scientific progress, and must ever remain the 

 heritage of finite man. All we see around us, the broad and 

 beautiful landscape, with its lofty mountains, smoothly-flowing 

 rivers, rocks and trees, birds and flowers, the heavens themselves, 

 with their long retinue of suns and stars, are but the manifested 

 effect of pre-existing causes, which recede as the philosopher pushes 

 back the boundary of the known. In the infancy of nations 

 thoughtful men loved to consider the phenomena of the external 

 world under the personification of human forms, but as philosophy 

 became enlightened enough to reason upon the causes of pheno- 

 mena a strange and mighty power was imputed to antecedent 

 causes. The Indian " sees God in clouds, and hears him in the 

 wind." With the Greeks this ideality pervaded all Nature— each 

 hill and dale, grove and plain, was peopled by their Deities. 

 When the thunder rolled across the heavens the voice of Jove was 

 heard in its rumbling echoes; when the sea was lashed into a 

 storm the roar of its waters was interpreted to be the trumpet of 

 the Tritons, and Neptune showed his anger in the waves. Fauns 



