INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 11 
They never dreamed, that, within the last twenty-four 
hours, from Iceland to Cape Horn—from San Francisco 
to Bombay—these precious drugs have annihilated more 
human pain and anguish, than can have possibly been 
inflicted in the same time by all the warriors and tyrants 
on the face of the earth on all their battlefields, or scaffolds, 
or dungeons. As little did old Galvani reckon, as he 
watched the twitchings of his frogs’ legs, that to-day his 
discovery would work such wonders, that the flying carpet, 
and Aladdin’s lamp, and the Afrits and Genii of the Arabian 
Nights’ Tales, would all be considered persons and things 
of an obsolete and somewhat antiquated character, about 
which there was nothing to astonish us. 
We cannot quite find in Biology the astounding triumphs 
of physical science; but, as we grope about in our search 
after life and eternity, we may stumble over things that 
make even time and present existence happier and easier 
to bear. This very society owes its origin to the existence 
of the Liverpool Marine Biology Committee, a body of 
naturalists who associated together for the purpose of 
- Investigating the fauna of Liverpool Bay. They have made 
a series of valuable dredging cruises; valuable and, I am 
told, very pleasant withal. Ido not doubt but that many 
a hardy weather-beaten fisherman, as he passed the tug 
where the dredging committee were bottling the crustaceans 
and annelids of their last haul, has pitied them, from the 
bottom of his soul, as individuals the harmlessness of 
whose amusement was the only saving clause which pre- 
vented them from being shut up in a lunatic asylum. He 
did not know that these gentlemen were really examining 
the soil of a farm;—that they were considering the adap- 
tability of this bank for soles, and that bottom for oysters, 
of this ravine for bait, and of that rocky bed for lobsters, 
just as a farmer would lay out one field for wheat, 
