peesiDent's addeess. 91 



and others have done before them, instead of being dabblers and 

 smatterers who do nothing well. Surely, now that there is a 

 College of Physical Science in Newcastle, we might hope 

 to find an increase and not a decrease in the students of 

 Natural Science. Vast fields of research in respect to the fauna 

 and flora of our northern counties remain untrodden. No cata- 

 logue exists of the fishes of the district, yet the extensive use of 

 trawls now employed should give most favourable opportunities 

 of investigation in this direction. Few of the Insecta, if we ex- 

 cept the Lepidoptera and Coleoptera, have been studied and cata- 

 logued efficiently. The Arachnida, the Myriapoda, the Annelida, 

 the Eotifera, the Spongida, and most of the Protozoa await ex- 

 amination. The Mosses, the Lichens, and the Fungi remain 

 subjects for lifelong study. The Fresh-water Algge, the Desmi- 

 diacese, and Diatomacese, though they have been studied, have 

 not yet been catalogued. Let me earnestly urge our younger 

 members to devote themselves to the careful painstaking investi- 

 gation of one of these groups. Natural History has little fasci- 

 nation for the mere idea ; it has a continually -increasing and 

 never-palling charm to the student who will but search deeply 

 into the mysteries which hang over the morphology, the physi- 

 ology, and homology of the minutest organ of the smallest or- 

 ganism, and compare them with the same parts in its nearer 

 or more distant allies of the same and of other groups. 



PART II.— THE ABYSSES OF THE OCEAN. 



The fifteen years which have passed since I last had the honour 

 of presiding over this Club, and addressing you from this Chair, 

 have constituted a period marked by great progress of knowledge 

 in most branches of Natural Science. I may especially call to 

 your mind the astonishing discoveries which have been taking 

 place as to the nature, properties, and interrelations of heat, 

 light, electricity, and sound ; the insight into the composition of 

 terrestrial and heavenly bodies which Spectroscopy has given us ; 

 our altered views with regard to what used to be considered 



