386 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



become a mere materialist. The poetic, the imaginative, the 

 emotional, the spiritual, all go to make up the man; and if 

 one of these is missing, he is incomplete. 



I canot but feel that the danger of this concentration upon one 

 side only of nature is painfully illustrated in the life of our great 

 master, Darwin. In his early days he was a lover of literature, 

 he delighted in Shakespeare and other poets ; but after years of 

 scientific activity and interest, he found, on taking them up again, 

 that he had not only grown indifferent to them, but that they 

 were even distasteful to him. He had suffered a sort of atrophy 

 on that side of his nature, as the disused pinions of the Kakapo 

 have become powerless — the spiritual, the imaginative, the emo- 

 tional, we may call it. 



The case of Darwin illustrates a law, — a principle we may 

 call it, — namely, that the spiritual faculty lives or dies by exer- 

 cise of the want of it, even as does the bodily. Yet the atrophy 

 was unconscious. Far was it from Darwin to ignore or depreciate 

 studies not his own. He has shown us this when he prefixed to 

 the title-page of his great work the following extract from Lord 

 Chancellor Bacon : " To conclude, therefore, let no man, out of 

 a weak conceit of sobriety, or an ill-applied moderation, think or 

 maintain that a man can search too far, or be too well studied in 

 the book of God's word, or in the book of God's works, divinity 

 or philosophy, but rather let men endeavour an endless progress 

 or proficience in both." In true harmony this with the spirit of 

 the father of natural history; concluding with the words, " Lord, 

 how manifold are Thy works, in wisdom hast Thou made them 

 all, the earth is full of Thy riches." 



BRITISH ASSOCIATION REPORTS. 



Following the Presidential Address in the Biological Section 

 ■ — which owing to the regrettable illness of the President, the Rev. 

 Canon Tristram, was read in his absence — several reports of 

 much interest to zoologists were presented. 



Marine biological investigations. — Investigations made at the 

 laboratory of the Marine Biological Association at Plymouth 



