BY THE KEY, C.VNON XKISTliAM. 15 



have been doing good work. That great island remained almost 

 the last terra incognita of our maps. The reproach is being ra- 

 pidly removed. To us as naturalists it is peculiarly interesting, 

 as no portion of the globe can rival it in the number, the variety, 

 the richness, or the peculiarity of its Fauna. Probably more 

 new species have been added to our lists from ]N"ew Gruinea re- 

 cently than from any country within the last half century. ]S"ot 

 the least remarkable are several new Monotremes, that lowest 

 form of mammalian life, hitherto known only by the Ecliidna 

 and Ornithorhjnchus of Australia. 



When from the field we turn to the closet the year has not 

 been barren of results. Some of the carefully-worked reports of 

 the ''Challenger" have already appeared; others are in progress. 

 The Eoyal Society has recently published a sumptuous quarto 

 volume of the natural history and geology of the islands visited 

 by the Astronomical Expeditions to observe the transit of "Venus, 

 an exhaustive and invaluable contribution to the solution of the 

 great problem of insular faunas and floras. The Mascarene is- 

 lands, once the richest, but now, alas, with every native species 

 of animal and vegetable life either extinct or on the verge of ex- 

 . tinction, have been thoroughly ransacked, and whatever could be 

 put on record has been preserved for future ages. The skeletons 

 of the long extinct didine birds of Eodriguez, now a conspicuous 

 ornament of the bird room of the British Museum, are unique 

 and priceless relics of a perished Fauna. Scarcely less interesting 

 is the exhaustive report of Kerguelen's land, illustrating what 

 forms, and, with what modifications, can exist and propagate on 

 the most dreary and inhospitable spot on the surface of the globe. 



It may be perhaps permitted me, before I conclude, to make a 

 few reflections on the changed position of the student of natural 

 science during the twenty years which have elapsed since I had 

 last the honour of addressing you. The study has in the interim 

 become more and more emphatically the property of the specialist. 

 A generation back many a naturalist did good work in a general 

 way, and did much to advance science, without being in any de- 

 gree a specialist. Such men were Selby, Vigors, Jardine, Sir 

 W. Hooker, and others, whom no one would think of calling 



