BELFAST 



NATURAL HISTORY & PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY 



SESSION 1899-1900. 



7/^ November^ 18Q9, 



ADDRESS BY THE PRESIDENT, 



Mr. Thomas Workman, J. P. 



Incentives to the Study of Natural History. 



{Abstract) 



It has no doubt been the privilege of many of you to ascend the 

 St Gothard valley by the wonderful railway that has been so skil- 

 fully engineered up it. At one moment the traveller is carried 

 in a straight line towards the snow crested alps at the summit^ 

 as if no obstacle stood in the path, but that lasts only for a 

 little way. In another moment, with a shrieking whistle, you 

 enter into a darksome cavern of a tunnel, and the traveller 

 knows not whether his course is away from or towards the 

 object of his aspiration. However, when you again emerge into 

 the sunlight you find, though you have taken an enormous 

 spiral, you are ; till going onwards and u wards, and you can 

 see far below you th road you formerly traversed, and that 

 even your backward course was an onward one. 



Such, it appears to me, is scientific progress ; we seem never 

 for any time on the straight course to perfect knowledge, but 

 ever on a spiral one if we follow after truth. 



We cannot follow absolute truth, but only truth as it appears 



