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single branch of botany, geologj , entomology, conchology, what you 

 will, and work it honestly out in its every minutest detail, and you 

 will soon find you will be able to give very valuable and interesting 

 information. Take for example, some single grass, study its 

 general and microscopical structure, its geographical distribution, 

 the soil in which it flourishes best, its method of growth, flowering, 

 seeding, microscopic appearance of its seed, often very beautiful, 

 commercial value, &c., &c., or select, if you prefer it, some single 

 flower, fern, or shell, but give it your undivided attention. Or 

 keep some pet, such as a treefrog, spider, or tadpole, and observe 

 closely its metamorphoses, diet, habits, and instincts, its likes and 

 dislikes, character, and domestic life ; or rear some particular 

 butterfly or moth , such for example as the silkworm moth , watch care- 

 fully its wonderful metamorphoses, its different foods, its perceptions 

 of light, sound, taste, and colour, its parasites and diseases, and 

 then give the society tJie benefit of your researches. As an ex- 

 ample of what I mean, I might cite Dewitz's exhaustive and most 

 interesting treatise on "the construction and development of the 

 sting of the Ant." 'This is the point I wish to impress on you, 

 take one single subject, and " hammer away " at it, make your- 

 self thoroughly familiar with it and there will no longer be any 

 difficulty about your writing a paper. Again see what Huber, 

 Forel, and more recently Sir John Lubbock, has done in his re- 

 searches into the life history of Ants. What marvels they relate 

 of their intelligence, their organised expeditions, their war-making, 

 slave capturing, farming (if keeping milch animals and storing of 

 forage can be so called), of their bridge building, architecture, 

 burial processions, &c. I hope, ere long, to give you a paper on 

 this subject, though, I, alas, have no time to practice what I preach, 

 and must needs avail myself of the painstaking researches of others. 

 I may instance also the immense interest and importance of the 

 researches of Darwin, the most painstaking and indefatigable of 

 investigators into the important, though unsuspected part played 

 by that lowly animal the Earthworm in modifying, levelling, and 

 fertilising the surface of the earth. How it not only acts as nature's 

 plough, by bringing up to the surface the deeper particles of the 

 soil, but also by so doing, spreads the germs of disease which were 

 buried many a fathom deep, for I suppose you all know that those 

 tiny twisted cylinders of earth, which are so numerous on grassy 

 lands, are all " casts" of earth which nave been swallowed and 

 passed through the intestinal canal of the common Earthworm. 



When we turn from our own little society, and attempt to review 

 the advance of science during the last years, we find ourselves at 

 one of the pauses or resting places of scientific progress. The origin 

 and progress of science has always seemed to me like that of a 



