THE WOMBAT. 23 



when we look at some of our tendril-bearing or climbing 

 plants. The plant places its tendrils ready for action as a 

 polypus places its tentacula. Darwin says that these tendrils 

 are acted on by the light, and bend towards it, or from it, or 

 disregard it, as is most advantageous. As soon as the tendril 

 strikes some object it grasps it, and quickly curls round it. 

 The climbing plants in our gardens of themselves form a 

 living text book, responding warmly to every inquiry and 

 exhibiting a living history which again shows the fundamental 

 unity of the plant and animal kingdoms, seeing that the 

 salient faculties of digestion, of purposive locomotion, of rapid 

 communication and consentaneous action are not restricted to 

 animals, but are possessed in a high degree by plants also. 

 There is a class of plants which really capture and digest 

 animal food, so that there is ample proof of the unity of 

 functions in the two kingdoms and of reciprocal combinations 

 between them. Modern biology thus teaches that life at 

 bottom is one phenomenon, manifested in essentially the same 

 manner by plant and animal alike. To depart from such a 

 belief would be to throw a hindrance in the path of scientific 

 progress ; in fact, as I said above, a knowledge of natural 

 phenomena is to civilisation what the compass is to the 

 mariner, what steam is to navigation, and what the telescope 

 is to astronomy. 



Concluding remarks. In looking upon the broad domain 

 of the natural science of to-day, and observing the restless 

 activity with which the scientific mind explores its minutest 

 by-paths, whether in regard to the enormous advances in 

 mechanical devices, or whether in the sum of knowledge con- 

 cerning man's place in nature or the evils which his flesh is 

 heir to, or has acquired, the continued advance in bacteriology 

 stands out as a prominent feature in pharmocology, which, by 

 the aid of the naturalist, presses into its service bird, beast, 

 and fish ; most things that grow on the earth's service, and 

 much that lies beneath. 



Here we may well pause for a moment to reflect what is 

 to be the outcome of this increasing sum of knowledge. Short 

 of the gift of prophecy, no man .can say, yet the future is 

 dimly revealed by such facts as I have, however imperfectly, 

 tried to put before you this evening. But natural science is, 

 in the best sense of the term, evolutionary, and will do in the 

 future what it is doing in the present, its great work of giving 

 expression to the facts and truths of nature and the system of 

 evolutionary changes that mark its progress. For whatever 

 lies within the sphere of observation, experiment, and com- 

 parison- — whether galaxy, which only the telescope makes 

 known, or monad, whose existence only the microscope 



