Presidential Address. 101 



tures of the Somerville course not only consecutive but on 

 subjects connected by natural affinities. Many people attend 

 the whole couise when thus arranged and receive an amount 

 of educational benefit not possible, when the lectures, how- 

 ever good in themselves, are not closely related. It should . 

 be the object of every teacher — no matter what his exact 

 position, to beget a desire on the part of his hearers to 

 know more and to attempt to investigate in some humble 

 way for themselves — for after all, we know just so much as 

 we really make a part of our individual nature by personal 

 observation or experience. 



This year the Society appropriated such a sum as it could 

 afford for illustrating the Somerville course, in carrying out 

 which we were efficiently assisted by Mr. Williams So 

 great is the tendency to use illustrations these days that it 

 is scarcely possible to be up to the times without them. On 

 the other hand we witness almost daily evidence of their 

 abuse, and I should be sorry ever to see Mr. Somerville's 

 noble purpose degraded into the giving of a mere show or 

 exhibition for amusement. I cannot believe it is ever the 

 purpose of science as science to amuse. 



People who regard our domestic animals merely as objects 

 of amusement, a sort of animated toys, never rise to pro- 

 per conceptions of these creatures. On the contrary, from 

 the student's point of view, all creatures are alike worthy 

 of the most earnest, perhaps I may say reverent study, as 

 illustrating great laws which apply throughout the universe. 



I therefore think that the Somerville course of lectures of 

 last winter on our domestic animals, given by persons who 

 were thoroughly competent to treat of them, should have 

 done much to lead to a better study of those creatures that 

 have been most truthfully termed " our dumb friends." 



It is scarcely possible to observe wild animals so closely 

 and to study their relations to their surroundings so suc- 

 cessfully as in the case of domestic animals. That part of 

 natural history which we can best understand is what per- 

 tains to the working of the animal body, because we can 

 supplement study of wild and domestic forms of life by 

 observation on ourselves. 



