ANNIVERSARY At)DR.£SS 127 



to the possible acquaintance of the lady-members with 

 this passage when engaged in their youthful studies, 

 leads me to " take occasion by the hand," or rather a 

 lady b}^ the hand, and to lead her to view the wonders 

 of Nature, where likely to excite her special interest ; 

 and to show how in some instances the records of these 

 wonders have been the work of learned women them- 

 selves. Let not these gentle aspirants to intellectual 

 achievement fear the epithet at times launched against 

 the learned woman ; rather may they rejoice in the 

 conciousness of acquired power, and in the feeling that 

 possibly that learning may hereafter be in part conveyed 

 to others. How often have we seen and heard that the 

 mother's attainments, and her sagacious devotion to her 

 son, have started the scientific thought and made the 

 man ! To those, therefore, now more specially addressed, 

 it may be interesting to describe particular instances of 

 peculiarities in the animal and vegetable worlds, natural 

 curiosities, such as where Nature seems to act in analogy 

 with the social, administrative, not to say domestic, 

 functions of man. I trust that in referring to " curiosi- 

 ties" of Science, descent to an unworthy level will not 

 be imputed, when we have through the elder Disraeli 

 the phrase " Curiosities of Literature." At the same 

 time I admit that to only a few of my audience will 

 the following be either novel or curious. To take first 

 the animal world, we have " Commensalism," or a 

 common table, but, as used in science, "the intimate, 

 but never parasitic, association of two different kinds of 

 organisms for the benefit of one, or very often of both." 

 The former, the benefit of one, suggests to me the 

 relation of master and servant, and the other where 

 the two benefit, a legal partnership. Certain small 

 crabs pass their lives inside various bi-valve shells, and 

 never seem to leave them. A little fish takes up its 

 abode in the stomach of a sea-anemone. Can this be 

 to relieve the anemone of some of the contents, so that 



