INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 
By W. MircuHett Banks, M.D., F.R.C.S., PRESIDENT, 
PROFESSOR OF ANATOMY IN UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, LIVERPOOL. 
[Read 22nd January, 1887.] 
To have been asked to become the first president of the 
Biological Society of Liverpool is an honour of which I 
am indeed proud. I wish I could say with equal sincerity 
that I feel myself worthy of the position. For years past 
the inroads upon my time made by the necessities of 
surgical practice and of hospital teaching have gradually 
driven me further and further back into my own corner of 
biology, viz. human anatomy, until now I find that it is 
as much as I can do to keep myself abreast of that depart- 
ment in the interests of my students. But I console 
myself by thinking that doubtless there are not a few in 
this assemblage, who find that all they can do is to culti- 
vate some little patch in the biological garden, and that, 
after all, we may each of us contribute our modest flower 
to the common garland of knowledge. 
The study of Biology by the public is but a thing of 
yesterday, but, at the same time, it has spread with the 
most amazing rapidity. And the desire for a more inti- 
mate and accurate acquaintance with it, which is now 
manifested by numbers who are not professional scientific 
investigators or teachers, has passed far beyond the stage 
of mere general interest, and can no longer be satisfied 
with the popular lecture of former days. In every great 
city there are numbers of men, who, for their own pleasure 
and recreation, have dug deeply into nooks and corners of 
the great mines of Natural History and Botany, and who 
