THE ZOOLOGIST. 



EDITORIAL GLEANINGS, 



The Presidential Address to the Yorkshire Naturalists' Union by Sir 

 Michael Foster, Secretary of the Royal Society, &c, is a very important 

 and welcome deliverance in the cabal of modern biological scholasticism. 

 The Tower of Babel finds its equivalent in the current methods of building 

 the city of Natural Knowledge, and raising the " tower of Science." Amidst 

 the plethora of much scientific jargon, Sir Michael well remarks, "the 

 old example of the plain of Shinar bids every thoughtful man to ask him- 

 self the question, Is not this confusion of languages hindering and spoiling 

 the work, even if it will not, as it did of old, stop it altogether ?" We have 

 specialized ourselves to the point of ignorance. Take the Royal Society 

 and its purview of ascertainable knowledge. Our authority cites as an 

 example the papers read before a single meeting, that of June 16th, 1897. 

 He observes : — " I make bold to say that neither the Presideut of the 

 Society, nor any other of the officers, nor any one of the Fellows, could of 

 his own knowledge state what was the exact meaning of each of all those 

 titles. If you asked such a one to do it, he would tell you that he did not 

 understand the speech of most of them. . . . The tower has risen to a 

 considerable height since the Royal Society was founded, and its Fellows 

 are no longer able to understand one another's speech." We wish we 

 could print the whole of this address; no extracts do it justice. "There 

 is a good old word f Naturalist,' which, though it originally had to do with 

 the nature of all things which exist, has in course of time beeu narrowed to 

 the things which are alive. In this sense the naturalist was a man who 

 busied himself with ' Nature ' as manifested in living creatures, who sought 

 to solve all the problems which life presents. Form, structure, function, 

 habits, history, all and each of these supplied him with facts from which 

 he wrested his conclusions. Observation was his chief tool, and the field 

 his main workshop. To him invidious distinctions between different parts 

 of biologic learning were unknown. He had not learnt to exalt either 

 form or structure or function to the neglect of the rest. Everything he 

 could learn came to him as a help towards answering the questions which 

 pressed on him for an answer. A naturalist of this kind, however — a 

 whole-minded inquirer into the nature of living beings — is for the most 

 part a thing of the past. He has well-nigh disappeared through the process 

 of differentiation of which I have spoken." 



