CHAPTEE VII 



ARISTOTLE ON BIEDS ' 



All associations, all universities for example, and all 

 colleges and schools, from time to time perform the 

 welcome duty of celebrating the memory of their 

 founders and benefactors : a duty to which it is all 

 the more important to attend, because we are all of 

 us so liable to forget the debt we owe to those who 

 have spent their labour or their wealth to make us 

 what we are. We are obliged to spur our memories 

 from time to time by these wholesome ceremonies, 

 to save ourselves from forgetting how our association 

 came into existence, and to whom it owes its life 

 and all its successful work. 



I am going to speak this evening of one who 

 may not inaptly be described as the founder and 

 the benefactor of all Natural History Societies. It 

 is a bold step to take, for I shall have to carry you 

 back to a period more than three hundred years before 



1 A lecture given to the Natural History Society of Marlborough 

 College, November 1887. 



