OPENING ADDKESS. 25 



subject is not one which offers to the layman any definite 

 commercial advantage, so that, as far as England and 

 America go, it needs for its support that pious founder 

 whose arising even a Bodleian Librarian has now anxiously 

 to await. Bat as Biologists we need no such meretricious 

 stimulant as pecuniary gain ; it is enough for us to know 

 that we shall obtain by Comparative Physiology a deeper 

 and truer insight into the complicated skein of the organic 

 world ; we have our reward in the endeavour which we 

 make, either to trace or to realise that harmony which 

 underlies all the varied tints of a life, that 



" Like a dome of many coloured glass 



Stains the white radiance of Eternity." 



